1 



iiiili 



HISTORY OP FRANCE, 



FBOai THK 



CONQUEST OF GAUL BY JULIUS CiESAR 



GI 



THE REIGN J3FmL0UIS PHILIPPE- 



CONVERSATIONS AT THE END>^OF EACH CHAPTEK.* 






BY MRS. M A R K H A M. 

C . 1' 



^-:^' 



rSEPARED FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS BY THE ADDlTIOi^ OK A 

IIAF, NOTES, AND QUESTIONS, AND A SUPPLEMENTART 

CHAPTER, BRINGING DOWN THE HISTORY TO THE 

PRESENT TIME. 



,^ 



BY JACOB ABBOTT 







NEW YORK: 

HARPER &, BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 
3S9 & 331 PEARL STREET. 

fRANKLlW SQUARE 

1876. 



Q^ CONGRESS p 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand 
eight hundred and forty-eight, by 

Harper & Brothers, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District 
of New York. 



Copyright, 1876, by Jacob Abbott. 






INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR. 



Litter from Richard Markham to his Mother. 

Dear Mamma, 

I BELIEVE I told you iu my last letter, that George and I 

are removed into a higher class ; but I forgot to say that one 

of the advantages of our promotion is, that we are aUow^ed 

access to a school library of all sorts of useful and amusing 

books, vi^hich Dr. has formed for the use of the upper 

boys. The first book I happened to take out was Turner's 
Tour in Normandy, a most entertaining book. If you have 
not read it, pray send for it. There is a great deal in it about 
the old Norman kings of England, which, thanks to the history 
of England that you wrote for us when we were little boys, 
understood perfectly ; but there are also several allusions tc 
French history, which I am obliged to pass over without 
comprehending ; so that I lose a great deal of pleasure. 
Now, my dear mamma, George and I have a favor to ask of 
you, which is, that you will be so kind as to write a history 
of France for us against we come home at the holidays. For, 
to pay th3 truth, we both of us feel quite ashamed of knowing 
BO Httle of the history of a people who are our nearest neigh' 
bor?, and with whom we have often had so much to de 



vi INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHCR. 

Pray let me have an immediate answer; for George and 1 
are very impatient to know whether you will grant us this 
ret^uest. "With love and duty to papa, and love to dear littl* 
ATary, I am, my dear mamr^ia, 

Your dutiful and most affectionate Son, 

Richard Markium 



Mrs. Marhham, in Answer. 
My Dearest Boy, 
You know that your father and I have no wish more a1 
heart than to promote the improvement and happiness of oui 
children. I shall, therefore, have real pleasure in complying 
with your wishes, as far as my powers and opportunities wili 
permit ; but you must give me more time for my task than, 
in your impatience, you seem willing to allow : for I shall 
have many books to read and refer to ; and the more, because 
the French literature abounds with memoirs, which are not 
less entertaining, nor indeed instructive, than regular histo- 
ries. Be assured, however, that I will do my best to make 
my little compilation worth your acceptance ; and that, if I 
fail, it will not be for want of industry, nor from a want of 
desire to give you pleasure. Accept the prayers and best 
wishes of your father and mother for your health and happi- 
ness, with the kind love of your sister, and believe me ever 
my dear Richard. 

Youi affectionate Mother, 



BY THE EDITOR. 



T:iE History cf France, by Mrs. Markham, is a very clear 
succinct, and entertaining narrative. It seems well adapted 
to its purpose of communicating, either to the general reader 
or to a class of pupils in a literary seminary, a distinct ant 
connected idea of the progress of events of which that most 
remarkable country has been the scene. 

A very full and carefully executed map of France, not con- 
tained in the original work, has been provided for this edition ; 
and in respect to all places of any importance mentioned in 
the work, there are notes of reference to facilitate finding them 
upon the map. To carry in the mind a distinct idea of the 
locahties referred to, in reading history, is always of very essen 
tial importance. No clear and correct ideas can be obtained 
without it. There is, in fact, no pleasure in reading history 
without it, and no possibility of laying up the facts perma- 
nently in the memory. I would therefore most strongly rec- 
ommend, both to individual readers, and to classes in literary 
institutions, who may use this book, to carry the map, and a 
distinct conception of all the locahties, with them, everj' step 
of the way. Sometimes the progress of the history carries 
he reader beyond the confines of France, into the Nether- 
lands — ^into Italy — into Spain — and, in the case of the Cru 
sades, to Asia Minor and to the Holy Land. It being not 
convenient to insert maps of all these countries in this volumo, 



"m INTBODUCTION BY THE EDITOR. 

the reader must seek tliem from other sources ; and i would 
very strongly urge upon teachers the necessity of soeing that 
their classes have access to su sh maps, by means of the atlases 
in ordinary use, and that they trace upon them, in a careful and 
thorough manner, the track of the armies, and the courses of 
the expeditions, whose movements aie recorded in the history, 

AaisoTTs' Institution, 

Nbw York Citt, Aug., 184& 



CONTENTS. 



1.— rRUM THE CONQUEST OF GAUL BY JULIUS CiESAR, TO THE IX- 

TINCTIOS OF THE ROMAN POWER BY CLOVIS 13 

2. — TO THE ACCESSION OF CHARLEMAGNE - 20 

3. — THE CARLOriNGIAN RACE 29 

4. — THE CARLOVINGIAN RACE — CONTINUED.- 42 

5. — THE CARLOVINGIAN RACE — CONCLUDED 51 

6. — HUGH CAPET 64 

7. — ROBERT, SURNAMED THE PIOUS 72 

8. — HENRY 1 80 

9. — PHILIP I 88 

10. — LOUIS VI., SURNAMED THE FAT - 101 

11. — LOUIS VII., SURNAMED THE YOUNG 110 

12. — PHILIP II., SURNAMED AUGUSTUS - 125 

13. — LOUIS VIIL, SURNAMED THE LION ISsJ 

14. — LOUIS IS., OR SAINT LOUIS 146 

15. — PHILIP III., SURNAMED THE BOLD... 159 

16. — PHILIP IV., SURNAMED THE FAIR 170 

17. — LOUIS X., SURNAMED HUTIN — PHILIP V., SURNAMED THE LONG 

— CHARLES IV., SURNAMED THE FAIR 183 

18. — PHILIP VI. OF VALOIS, SURNAMED THE FORTUNATE 192 

19. — JOHN, SURNAMED THE GOOD 202 

20. — CHARLES v., SURNAMED THE WISE - 216 

21. — CHARLES VI., SURNAMED THE WELL BELOVED . 224 

22. — CHARIES VII., SURNAMED THE VICTORIOUS -. 239 

23. — LOUIS XI -. - — --- 255 

24. — CHARLES VIIL, SURNAMED THE AFFABLE 272 

25. — LOUIS XII., SURNAMED THE FATHER OF THE PEOPLE 28^ 

26. — FRANCIS I -...„. 291 



X 



CONTENTS. 



CHAP. PA«I 

2". — HENRY II. .-. 318 

28. — FRANCIS II 330 

29. — CHARLES IX 339 

30. — HENRT III 357 

31. — HENRT IV., SURNAMED THE GREAT 371 

32. — LOUIS XIII., SURNAMED THE JUST 388 

33. — LOUIS XIV 406 

34. — LOUIS XIV. — IN CONTINUATION 427 

35. — LOUIS XV 452 

36. — LOUIS XV. — IN CONTINUATION 467 

87. — LOUIS XVI 483 

38. — LOUIS XVI. — IN CONTINUATION . ........... 497 

39. — THE REPUBLIC 522 

40. — NAPOLEON 545 

41. — LOUIS XVIII 566 

42. — CHARLES X 571 

43.— LOUIS PHILIPPE 565 

INDEX Ml 

QVEOTIOKS . „ MS 



LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS. 



;. — ^PrakcwI. ^ 

S.— Clovis 12 

3.— Throne of Dagobert 20 

4, — Charlemagne 29 

5.— Ladies of the Twelfth Century 4S 

6. — Ruins of the Castle of.Montlhery 51 

7.— Chiteau Galllard 62 

8.— Robert 72 

9. — Knight arrayed for a Tournament SO 

10. — Figures taten from Monuments of the Twelfth Century 83 

11. — Ladies in the dress of the Fifteenth Century 101 

12. — Front of the Church of Notre Dame, in Paris - 110 

v3.— St. Denis 113 

14.— The Louvre in 1360 125 

^5.— Thibaud, Count of Champagne 139 

16. — Church of Cluerqueville near Cherbourg 14.5 

17. — Blanch of Castile. — St. Louis -. 146 

18.— Castle of Joinville 156 

19. — Robert, Count of Clermont. — The Lady of Bourbon 159 

20. — ^A Knight Templar. — Charles of Anjou, King of Sicily... 170 

21. — Avignon .. .. 175 

22. — Huntsmen and Valet of Philip the Fair ..., 183 

23. — Vincennes 190 

84. — ^John de Montford and his Countess. — Charles de Bloia .. .... 192 

25. — A Crossbow-man 201 

86.— King John.— The Earl of Alenijon, killed at Cressy 202 

27.— Charles V 217 

38. — The Constable Du Guesclin 219 

19. — Citizens of Paris in the Reign of Charles V -. 224 

W. — Combat between Macaire and the Dog of Montargis .. 233 

U. — Philip the Bold, Jolm the Fearless, Philip the (rood, Dukes of Bur- 
gundy 23S 

12. — John, Duke of Bourbon. — Arthurof Bretagne. — John IV., Dukes of 

Bretagne .. 244 

13 —A French Postillion of the Fifteenth Century 251 

" — A Couitier of the Fifteenth Certua-y. — Charles VIIL — S73 



12 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

txan 

35.— Louis XII. at Table 286 

36. — The Emperor Maximilian - 294 

37.— Chancellor Du Prat and his Wife... 297 

38. — Mad Margeret 311 

39.— Henry II 318 

40.— The Tilting between Henry II. and the Count de Montgomeri ... 323 

41. — Claude and Francis, Dukes of Guise 330 

42.— Gate of the Townof Moret 333 

43. — Catherine de Medicis and Charles IX 339 

44. — Monument of Montmorenci 356 

45. — Henry III. and his Clueen 357 

46. — Valet and Footman of Henry III. 365 

47. — Henry IV., Clueen, and Daaphin 371 

48.— Pont-Neuf and Tour de Nesle 378 

49. — Gentleman and Lady going to Court 338 

50.— Gaston, Duke of Orleans 399 

51. — Louis XrV., Madame de Maintenon, and Philip, Dake of Orleans 406 

52.— Louis XIV. hunting : 418 

53.— Statue of Comeille 427 

54.— Louis XIV 441 

55. — The Grand Dauphin and Ninon de L'Enclos. . 452 

56. — House of Madame de Sevign^ 466 

57. — ^Equestrian Statue of Louis XV. - 467 

58.— The Bastile 483 

59. — Ruins of Marie Antoinette's Farm at Trianon 493 

60.—The Tuileries 497 

61.— Tower of the Temple 523 

62. — Bobespierre and Danton . . 537 

83. — Napoleon Bonaparte , .. 5iS 

84.— Foitaine de Palmier , Ml 




Eng^'by %' Kerotle , 



HISTORY OF FRANCE. 



CHAPTER I 

FEOM THE CONaUEST OF GAUL BY JULIUS CAESAR, TO 
THIS EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER BY CLOVIS 

[B.C. 60 to A.D. 487.] 




CtOVlB. 

Before we begin, our history, we will open the map, and 
take a survey of France. We shall there see what an ex- 
tensive country it is, and what distinct boundaries nature has 
placed around it. The sea, the Pyrenees, and the Alps, in- 
cluding among the Alps the great chain of the Jura, almost 
encompass tliis fortunate region, except on one side, the side 
toward Germany. 

France, thus placed, as you see, in the center of the tem- 
perate zone, enjoys a delightful climate. The air is pure, 
and is in great measure free from the oppressive heat which 
IS felt in Italy, and from the f^gs that are sc common in thfl 
north of Europe 











UN 



'^^ 



c\ 







^^^ ^^C^<^°^ MOStlMOSIN ^ S- 



F.KAN rE 

I N 

lljrT.U.«...« hfly. M,.\ l\v.r l,»tiu Hiiivl^nxl. 

.■/■ Iht .iV.i,-(i «.,■ (fir 
l)lmi.l..n ..f lT„.liu K..,.wl«V. 

Mw »Ji ;..M.ii 4..v ;''-l .-i.'.) .>v 

J- r-tr-irT.-,rT;. vrr.. s-%-^r->^ 

S.Hi\t>: A/..U'mi>um, J.J.«Jl» IfciunJ JfuJfiiii 









^O.VVO^ 



. ^i- 



'^i" 



^*5- 













-<^ S <■ 



Jlua- 



HARPER i BROTHE.RS, NEW YOR 









fo^'^ 



/ J -I 



^l-< 



O.Y 







3iiig'»T>y "W K.- 



4 I ROM THE ROMAN CONQUEST [Chap. I 

Most plants tod fruits that can contribute to the enjoy- 
ment of man grow in France in great abundance. 

It is a land diversified with fertile plains, hills, woods, and 
rivers ; and I believe I do not exceed the truth in asserting 
that, of all the kno\vn countries of the world, this is, on the 
whole, the most favored by nature. 

With regard to the inhabitants, it is of course difficult to 
give a decided character of a nation containing nearly thirty 
millions of people ; but I am inclined to think that the French 
arc, in general, a cheerful, light-hearted race, of feelings quick 
and impetuous for the moment, but not deep or lasting. And 
though many shocking acts of savage cruelty are found to 
ilisgrace the different periods of their history, these have, I 
suppose, beei owing rather to the sudden ebullitions of un^ 
subdued and selfish passion than to any habitual asperity 
of disposition. Indeed, I believe that in their common inter- 
course with one another they are remarkably good-natured 
and kind-hearted. 

But let us look once more on the map. The country is 
now divided into eighty-six departments. The name of each 
of these departments, with a few exceptions, is taken from 
the chief river or rivers that run through it. Formerly 
France was divided into twenty-six provinces.^ Most of 
these provinces were, at one time or other, either httle in- 
dependent sovereignties, or principalities dependent on the 
king as feudal chief. These little sovereignties and princi- 
pahties were by degrees all merged in the crown, making 
the king of France one of the most powerful and absolute 
monarchs in Europe. How all these changes took place you 
shall hear in the course of this history. 

The earliest knowledge we have of France is from the 
Romans,, who speak of it under the name of Gallia, or Gaul, 
and describe the inhabitants as a very warhke people, who, in 
the early times of the Roman history, made frequent incur- 
sions into Italy, and even to the very walls of Rome itself. 
The Romans in their turn made reprisals on Gaul, and, 124 
years before Christ, founded a colony at Aix, in Provence. t 
Provence itself has indeed acquired its name from having 
been made at this early time a Roman province. 

* The cliansje was made at the revolution. The object was to extin 
puish tlie jealousies and animosities which prevailed in the provinces, 
these lara:e and ancient divisions having had a sort of seminational char 
BCter. We preserve the division into provinces in the map, as it is the 
past histoi-y of Franrie, rather tlian its present condition, with which this 
work has to do. t Jn the southeastern part of the map. 



13 C. 60- J rO THE TIME OF CLOVIS. 13 

Fifty years before Christ, Julius Ceesar completed tlie con- 
quest of Gaul, after a bloody war which had lasted ten years, 
and is said to have destroyed a large portion of its inliahitants. 

Gaul was now reduced to the condition of a Roman pro- 
vince, and was governed by Roman laws. In the reign 
of Augustus it was divided into four proArinces — Gallia Nar- 
bonensis, to tl.e south and Boutheast ; Aquitania, to the west 
and southwest ; Gallia Belgica, to the northeast ; and 
Gallia Celtica, in the northwest, and in the center. The 
Romans continued undisturbed masters of this fine territory' 
during two whole centuries ; but aboiit the year 260 various 
nations of barbarians began to make incursions into it, and 
in 411 and 418 the Burgundians and the Visigoths, two 
nations of Germany, succeeded in obtaining from the emperox 
Honorius settlements in the southern parts of the country. 

The most formidable enemies wliich the Romans had to 
contend with were a people who inhabited the districts lying 
on the lower Rhine and the Weser, and who called them- 
selves Franks — an appellation which it is said they had 
assumed to express their rooted determination to be free. 
These people invaded Gallia Belgica, and, after a conturued 
struggle of 130 years, succeeded m making themselves mas- 
ters of a considerable tract of land, and estabhshed their 
capital at Treves.* 

Dm'ing this period the names of Pharamond, Merovee, and 
many others, have been handed down to us as kings of the 
Franks. Indeed Pharamond, like our own king Arthur, has 
been made a hero of romance, and the name of Merovingian 
has been given to the race of the earliest French kings, on 
account of their supposed descent from Merovee. But the 
mention of these monarchs in the old chronicles is so obscure, 
that modern writers have doubted whether they ever existed. 
It is, however, very certain, that in the fifth century the 
Franks became a powerful people, and gave the name of 
France to their conquests in Gaul ; and that ui the year 458 
there was a king called Childeric, who extended his terri- 
tories to the banks of the Loire. There is even a story thai 
after a siege of ten years he took the city of Paris. 

Paris had been originally founded by the Celts, the mos\ 
ancient inhabitants of Gaul : Caesar himself speaks of it by 
the name of Lutetia ; but in his time it consisted of only a 
few circular huts, built of earth and wood, and thatched with 

* Northeast of France, on the Moselle. See the map for this and alt 
subsequent references of tins nature 



>b FROM THE ROMAN CONQUEST iChap. 1 

reeds. The E-omans adorned it with many noble buildings , 
and some of their baths, and the remains of a magnificent 
palace, built by the emperor Julian, are still to be seen. 
When conquered by the Franks, it was esteemed a consider- 
able place, although the whole of it was then contained with- 
m the limits of the little island of the Seine, which now forma 
the center and smallest part of the present magnificent city. 

The Burgundians and the Visigoths were established in 
Gallia Narbonensis. The Huns, Alans, with other bar- 
barous people, overran -Aquitania, and the Romans found 
themselves reduced to the narrov/ limits of the country which 
lay between the Seine and the Loire, which was called 
A.rmorica, a part of which now forms the province of Bre- 
tagne. Here they continued for a time to maiatain them.- 
selves as a separate state. - 

Gaul thus contained five, if not more, distinct states, each 
of which consisted of a different people, and kept up a con- 
tinual warfare with all the others. By degrees the lesser 
states were swallowed up by the more powerful ones, and in 
process of time the Franks became sole masters, and gave the 
name of France to the whole country ; but this was not tiU a 
long time after the period we are now speaking of. 

About the year 500 the little state of Armorica was extin- 
guished by the victories of Clovis, king of the Franks,4he son 
and successor of ChUderic, and the principal founder of the 
French monarchy. 

Christianity was introduced into Gaul in the second century. 
The first Christian bishop was Pothinus, bishop of Vienne 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER I. 

liichard. I suppose there are a great many Roman re- 
mains left in France ? 

Mrs. Marklmm. By much the most celebrated are thosd 
at and near Nismes. The Roman amphitheater wdiich stiU 
exists in this town is often compared with that at Verona, 
and even with the Coliseum itself There stiU exist also 
near Nismes the remains of a noble aqueduct, one part of 
which, stretching across the valley of the little river Gardou, 
is almost perfect, and has now the name of the Pont du Gard. 
Travelers assure us that it is necessary to see it over and over 
again to be able to form any just idea of its grandeur, sym* 
m^^try, and beauty There is also at Nismes another very 



joKv.- TO THE TIME OF CLOVIS. 17 

noble ruin, called the Maison Carree, wliich was erected by 
the emperor Augustus to the memory of the two sons of 
Agrippa : it is still in a state of excellent preservation. All 
the surrounding rubbish has been cleared away, and the 
greatest care is taken to protect it from injury, which is, 
mdeed, only what it merits, since we are assured that it is an 
exquisite model in architecture. There are also very con- 
siderable Roman remains to be found all along the banks of 
the Rhone, from Lyons to Aries.* But one of the most 
singular vestiges cf the great works of that extraordinary 
people is an amphitheater of earth, which is to be found in 
Normandy. 

George. That must be very curious indeed : I can not 
imagine how a building of earth could have stood so long. 

Mrs. M. I was going to explain to you, that this is not 
a building raised from the ground, but a work formed out of 
the ground itself In the center was hollowed out an arena.. 
and round it were terraces for the spectators to stand or sit, 
where they might view the games. Unfortunately no care 
seems to have been taken for the preservation of this singular 
monument of antiquity ; but the form of the arena and the 
position and number of the terraces are still visible. Advant- 
age was doubtless taken of the natural shape of the ground,, 
as in some few other similar cases, which are elsewhere to bt 
found. 

Richard. Pray, mamma, what part of France was Cisal 
pine Gaul? 

Mrs. M. Cisalpine Gaul was no part whatever of the 
country called Gaul, properly speakmg. It was a tract of 
land on the Italian side of the Alps, of which the Gauls, be- 
fore they were conquered by the Romans, had at one time 
made themselves masters. 

Ricfiard. How wonderful it is that the Romans, who 
were, in a manner, the masters of the world, should have let 
themselves be conquered by a set of barbarians ! 

Mrs. M. It certainly is very extraordinary that the power 
of a great and enlightened people should have been so totally 
subverted : but, in fact, the immense extent of the Roman 
empire was one of the chief causes of its destruction. It fell 
to pieces, as it were, by its own weight. Other causes, also, 
conduced to its overthrow : the Romans of the latter times 
were not like those of the former, but were become enervated 
by indolence and luxury. From that time, particularly wh'3H 
* Aries is near the mouth of the Rhone. 



18 FROM THE ROMAN CONQUEST LCHAr. 1 

the seat of empire was removed from Rome to Constantinople, 
a general decay of physical and moral power became apparent 
throughout the empire. The emperors were more like eastern 
monarchs than like what we might have expected the de- 
scendants of the old E-omans to be. The efleminacy of the 
court spread to the camp, and all classes of the people seemed 
to degenerate, and to become incapable of opposing any efiec- 
tual resistance to the inroads of the barbarians. 

Richard. Were the Visigoths and Ostrogoths the same 
people ? 

Mrs. M. The Goths all came originally from the north of 
Europe. The names of Visigoth and Ostrogoth were at first 
merely given to distinguish the eastern Goths from the west 
ern. 

Geoi'ge. They were very stupid people, were they not ? I 
have often heard stupid people called " Goths." 

Mrs. M. It is probable that when they first came from 
their forests in the North they had no great taste for the fine 
arts ; but I do not believe that they desei-ved to have their 
name used as a term of opprobrium. They were indeed the 
least savage of all the barbarous people who overran the south 
of Europe. They were governed by a code of laws of their 
own, and appeared to have made some progress toward civili- 
zation. They even encouraged the study of philosophy, and 
were noted for their kindness and hospitality to strangers. 
Their name, I think, ought to bespeak them some favor, for 
the word Goth was derived from goten, good, 

Kichard. What sort of people were the Franks ? 

Mrs. M. They are described as being naturally hvely and 
active, but at the same time impetuous and restless, and were 
noted for being the most cruel of all barbarians, and fonder of 
war than of peaceable occupations. 

George. What sort of weapons did they use ? 

Mrs. M. Bows and arrows were the arms they originally 
used; but after their conquests in France we read of their 
having a gi'eat variety of weapons. They had the franbisquei 
a two-edged axe, fastened to a short wooden handle ; and their 
method of using it Avas to hurl it at their enemies, at the first 
signal of combat. They had, also, another very formidable 
instrument of war, the anga^i, which was a lance furnished 
at the end with a barbed hook hke^a fish-hook. Besides these 
they had swords and darts. They wore very little defensive 
armor excepting the buckler. Every Frank v/ho was ca- 
pable of bearing arms was a soldier : they always fought oc 



CoNv.l TO THE TIME OF CLOVIS. 19 

foot, except the general or chief, who alone fought on horse- 
back 

Mary. If all the men went out fighting, how did they 
manage ahout sowing their corn, and getting in the harvest '' 

Mrs. M. As war and the chase were the sole occupations 
af the Franks, they left the cares and labors of agriculture tc 
their slaves. 

Richard. Then the Franks, it seems, had slaves, as well 
as the Saxons ? 

Mrs. M. The prisoners they took in war were their slaves. 
It does not appear that they trafficked in slaves, or ever made 
slaves of one another. 

George. Why, no ; they would not then have been free- 
men or Franks, you know. 

Mary. All this is not at all amusing ; can not you, deai 
mamma, find something more entertaining to tell us ? 

Mrs. M. Perhaps it may amuse you to hear a description 
of the way in which the families of the Roman patricians 
lived in Gaul. The houses were commonly spacious, and 
contained room, for a great number of persons. One side of 
every house was appropriated to the wohaen, who hved very 
much apart from the male inhabitants. Every family had a 
few confidential freedmen, whose business it was to act as 
upper servants, stewards, and masters of the house. All the 
rest were slaves, and as these people were commonly prisoners 
of war, and had been torn from their countries and their fam- 
ilies, they hated their masters and panted for revenge and foi 
liberty. At night they were chained up like so many' wild 
beasts in their cells, with the exception, perhaps, of those 
female slaves who were, or who had been, nurses to the 
lady of the mansion and her children, and who were suf- 
fered to remain unchained ; for a nurse, standing in a kind 
of maternal relationship, was supposed to be too much at- 
tached to all the members of a family to wish to murder any 
of them. , 

Mary. I am very glad, mamma, that you are not a Roman 
lady. 

Mrs. M. You must remember that I am only speaking 
of the Roman families who resided in Gaul, and who were 
surrounded by a wild and fierce population, chiefly, I suppose, 
the descendants of the ancient Gauls. Of their own bonds- 
men, also, they were in continual dread. 

Geo7-ge. So that, after all, these proiid Romans were ia 
fact the slaves of their slaves. 



20 



FROM CLOriS TO THE 



LChap. ii 



Richard. Pray, mamma, what was the rehglon of the 
ancient Gaiils ? 

Mrs. M. The rehgion of the Druids, which was the sama 
in all respects with the rehgion of the ancient Britons, liut 
after a wliile the Gauls intermixed some of the wild fancies 
of the heathen mythology, which they acquired from thei* 
Roman masters, with their own superstitions. 



CHAPTER II. 

FROM CLOVIS TO THE ACCESSION OF CHAULEMAQNE 
[Years after Christ, 487-741.] 




Throne of Daoobert. In the Museum at Paris. 

When Clovis first became king of France he was a pagan , 
but on his marriage with Clotilda, niece to the king of the 
Burgundians, who was a Christian, he and his people em- 
braced Christianity. The manner of his conversion is gener- 
ally related as follows : — The Franks of Gaul being at war 
with the Franks of Germany, the two armies met near Co 
logne, and, during the heat of the battle, Clovis addressed 
himself to the God of Clotilda, and vowed that, should he 
(i^ain the victory, ho would embrace the religion which sha 



A.D. 50r ] ACCBSSION OF OHAELEWAGNE. 21 

professed. Clovis was victorious, and kept his vow, if that 
can be called keeping it, which consisted in following only the 
outward forms of Christianity, and practicing none of its pre- 
C3pts. 

The reign of Clovis was a perpetual war. His -capital 
was at Soissons ; * hut even while there he hved constantly 
siorroiuided by his soldiers, more like the general of an army 
than like a king ; or, mdeed, I should rather compare him to 
a chief of banditti ; for his soldiers were only kept togethei 
by the constant hope and practice of plunder. 

In 507 Clovis led his army against the Visigoths, whoso 
chief city in France was Bordeaux, and who were in posses- 
sion of almost all the country between the E-hone, the Loire, 
and the Pyrenees. To give this war the apparent sanction 
of rehgion, Clovis affirmed that he had God's authority foi 
undertaking it ; and this he asserted on the following pre- 
text :- — In the church of St. Martin's, at Tours,t the book 
of Psalms was chanted day and night without intermission 
by priests who were appointed to that service. Clovis sent 
some of his people to the church, who were to inform him of 
the precise words which the priests should be chanting at the 
moment of their entrance. These words were the 40th and 
41st verses of the 18th Psalm : " Thou hast also given me 
the necks of mine enemies, that I might destroy them that 
hate me. They cried, but there was none to save them : 
even unto the Lord ; but he answered them not." These 
words Clovis chose to consider as applicable to himself, and 
he set forward in high spirits toward Poitiers. J 

When he reached the banks of the river Vienne, he was at 
some loss how to convey his army across. The story is, that 
while he was hesitating what to do, a hind, which had been 
roused from a neighboring thicket, started from her conceal- 
ment, and, rushing across the river in view of the army, 
showed the soldiers a ford by which they might pass in safety. 
The place, I am told, is called to this day " The passage of 
the hind." 

Clovis advanced to the Clain, ten miles south of Poitiers, 
where he encountered the Visigoths, and gained a complete 
victory. Bordeaux and the whole province of Aquitania then 
Biibmitted to him. He was afterward defeated at Aries § by 

* A short distance northeast of Paris. 

i On tlie Loire, at some distance from its mouth. 

J South of Tours. 

§ Near the mouth of the Rhone. 



22 FROM CLOVIS TO THE iCajLf. n 

Theodoric, who had estabhshed in Italy the domuiion of th* 
Ostrogoths, but he contrived to regain the greater part of his 
conquests. 

Clovis died in 511, having reigned thirty years. He was 
liberal to the clergy, and founded many churches ; and on this 
account the monkish historians gloss over the many acts of 
cruelty and treachery of which he was guilty. 

By his queen, Clotilda, who was canonized as a saint, he 
had four sons : 

(1.) Theodoric I., frequently called Thien-i. (2.) Clodomir 
(3.) Childebert. (4.) Clothaire. 

it was the custom among the Franks, that, on the death 
of their king, his possessions should be equally shared among 
his sons. This arrangement must have been attended with 
many serious evils, and it also renders the early part of the 
French histoiy exceedingly intricate and confused, .ft is 
scarcely possible to collect from any of the old chronicles a 
regular detail of events ; indeed, at best, they supply us with 
nothing but a melancholy record of crimes ; I shall therefore 
pass this period over as briefly as possible. 

Clothaire and Childebert, in the year 532, made themselves 
masters of the kingdom of the Burgundians, which extended 
at this time to the Alps and the Mediterranean. 

Clothaire was the survivor of all his brothers, and became 
sole monarch of France. He put to death, with his own 
hands, the children of his deceased brother, Clodomir : one 
only escaped from him, whose name was Chlodoald, and who 
afterward became a monk, and founded Saint Cloud, a re- 
ligious house near Paris, so called to tliis day, as you probably 
know. 

Clothaire died in 561, after a reign of fifty years. He left 
four sons : 

(1.) Charibert. (2.) Gonthran. (3.) Chilperic. (4.) 
Sigebert. 

The sons of Clothaire shared the Idngdom in like mamier 
as the sons of Clovis had done, and their, reigns present an- 
other half century of howible crimes. Chilperic married 
Fredegonde, a woman of low birth, but of great talents 
Sigebert married Bruiihault, daughter of the king of Spain. 
The most violent hatrerl and rivalry for power subsisted be- 
tween these two women, 5.nd led them to the commission of 
almost every crime of which human nature, when most per- 
verted, is capable. 

OS! Charibert littk. i.s recorded, exceptmg that he was the 



A..1) 693.] ACCESSION OF CHARLExMAGNE. '24 

father of ]5ertha, by whose marriage with Ethelbcrt, king of 
Xent, Christianity, as you have probably not forgot, was first 
uatroduced into Britain. 

Of all the sons of Clothaire, Gonthran was the one least 
polluted by crimes. He survived his brother some years, and 
on his death, in 593, the kingdom was divided between his 
two nephews : 

(1.) Childebert II., son of Sigebert and Brunhault. 

(2.) Clothaire II., son of Chilperic and Fredegonde. 

On account of the youth of these princes, their kingdoms 
were at first governed by their two mothers, of whose many 
crimes I will not shock you by the recital. Fredegonde died 
in 597, and her tomb is still shown in the church of St. Ger 
main des Pres, at Paris. Brunhault was put to death by 
Clothaire II., in the year 613. She was a woman of superior 
talents, and had a taste for architecture, and there are several 
buildings in France said to have been erected by her, and 
which still bear her name. 

At this time the name of Neustria was commonly given to 
that portion of the French territory which stretched from the 
Meuse and Loire to the sea ; and the name of Austrasia to 
the district which lay between the Rhine, the Meuse, and the 
Moselle, and of which Metz was the capital. 

Childebert II. died in 596, and left two sqns, who did not 
live many years. After their deaths Clothaire II. reigned 
alone till 628, when he died, leaving his kingdom between 
his two sons : 

(1.) Dagobert I. (2.) Charibert II. 

Dagobert, by the murder of his brother in 631, made him 
self master of the whole kingdom. This king bears a high 
character among the Merovingian princes. He was guilty 
of many atrocious crimes, but they were overlooked in the ' 
praise bestowed on him for his justice, which, we are told, he 
administered impartially, and without being bribed — a greatei 
proof of the vileness of his predecessors than of his own ex- 
cellence. 

France, during the reign of Dagobert, rose to some degree 
of consideration among the nations of Europe ; commerce 
began to flourish, and gold and silver, which before were 
scarcely known, now became plentiful. This, however, was 
but a short gleam of prosperity. Dagobert died in 638, and 
the monarchs who succeeded him were, either from their 
jouth or from their imbecility, incapable of taking any part 
in the governmenli. These kings, who rapidly succee(le<? 



ii . FROM CLOVIS TO THB [Chap 11, 

sacli other, and "whose line in succession you sliall have at 
the end of the chapter, are often entitled " The sluggards."* 
All power fell entirely into the hands of the mayors of the 
palace, officers whose dignity was next to that of the sover- 
eign Neustria, Austrasia, and Burgundy had each their 
separate mayors of the palace, who all endeavored to attair. 
the principal power. 

In 6S7 the whole power of the kingdom was usurped by 
Pepin d'Heristal, mayor of the palace of Austrasia, who 
merely suffered the reigning monarch to show himself to the 
people at the great amiual meeting of the Champ de Mars, 
keeping him at all other times almost a prisoner in his palace. 
Pepin died in 714, and his son Charles Martel succeeded him 
in his office and dignities. He was a man of great valor and 
activity, and kept the Franks cuntinually engaged in warlike 
enterprises. 

About tliis time the Saracens, who had before conquered 
Africa, crossed over into Spain, and won from the Goths a 
large portion of that country. They next threatened France, 
and advanced as far as Poitiers ; but their farther progress 
was stopped by Charles, who, in 732, gained a signal victory 
over them between Tours and Poitiers, and another near 
Avignon,t in 737. In 737 died Thierri IV., the last of the 
" sluggard" kings, and Charles no longer thought it necessary 
to keep up the form of appointing another nominal king ; and 
at his death, in 741, he bequeathed the kingdom, as in abso- 
lute right, between his two sons, Pepin and Carloman. Aqui- 
tania, however, was not included in this bequest, for that 
province was governed by dukes of its own, and refused to 
acknowledge the authority of Charles. 

Pepin and Carloman assumed the title as well as the power 

* of kings, and thus put an end to the Merovingian d}masty, or 

that of the race of Clovis, wliich had sat on the throne from 

481 to 741, in all 260 years. The following is a table of 

this first race of kings : 

Clovis began to reign in 431. 

Sons of Clovis. 

Theodoric oi Thiem I., 'l 

Clodomir, [Began tteir joint reigns in 511. CIotjiK're waf 

Childebert I., ( the survivor, an i died in 561. 

filothiiire I., J 



Les rois faineans. 
t Near the mouth of the S.hoj e 



A.D 74].] ACCESSION OF CHAKLEMAGIIE. 25 

Sons of Clothaire. 

Charibeii I,, 'l 

Gonthran, I Began their joint reigns in 561. 

Chilperic married Brunhault, f Gonthran was the survivor, and diedm 5»A 
Sigebert married Fredegonde, J 



Childebert II., sou of Sigebert, ) j . j. ■^^^„^ 
Clothaire II., son of Chilperic, J ° 



Sons of Childebert II. 
Theodebert, ) Reigned jointly with Clothaire II. tiU 613, when Clothaire* 
Thierri II., J became sole king. 

Sons of Clothaire U. 
Dagobert I., ) Began to reign in 628. In 631 Dagobert became sola 
Charibert II., ) king. 

Sons of Dagobert. 
Sigebert II., ? Began to reign in 638. Clovis, the survivor, died in 655 

Dagobert II., 
Clothaire III., 
Thierri III., 
Childeric II., 
Clovis III., 
Dagobert III., 

pwP^.'^*' TV I Faineans, under the government of Charles, the son of 
ThieXrV., ■' 5 ^^Pi^- 



Faineaus, who bore the title of kings from 656 to 714, and 
who were under the government of Pepin d'Heristal 



The Merovingian kings are sometimes called the long- 
haired kings,* from the custom among the ancient Franks of 
distinguishing the members of the royal family from the rest 
of the people by their long hair, which they wore hanging 
down in curls over their shoulders, while all the other Franks 
had it cut very short. 

Though the crown was hereditary, and in ordinary cases 
the- direct heir had a preference, yet it was not very unusual 
to set the direct heir aside, and to elect another member of 
the royal family, who for any reason might be better quahfied 
or more popular. 

One of the principal ceremonies in the inauguration of a 
monarch was to place him on a shield borne on men's shoul- 
ders, and proclaim him as king to the surrounding multitude. 

In the beginning of the sixth century some natives of Britain 
fled from the persecutions of their Saxon conquerors, and took 
refuge on the coasts of Armorica, which from them acquired 
the name of Bretagne. 

These Bretons, although they held themselves subjeet to 
the kings of France, still remained a distinct people, were 
governed by their own laws, and retained many of their own 

* Les rois chevelures. 



«6 mOM CLOVIS to the [CHAt. 11 

sustoriis. Aim, notwithstanding the length of time since thin 
settled in France, their posterity still retain the manners and 
appearance of a separate race. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER It 



T r»a ck-\Tay 



Mary. Pray, ir.amm:^ v/ill the histe-/ of Fr 
grow entertaining ? For so far, it does not amuse me at all. 

Mrs. Markham. You must have^ patience, my dear little 
girl : I think I may venture to promise you that you will like 
our history better by and by. L am not surprised that at 
present you find it somewhat dull. The early part of the his- 
tory of every country is necessarily uninteresting, from the 
meager and scanty details that are left us, and from the ob- 
scure and confused style in which these details are commonly 
written. 

Ridiard. "Who was it that wrote the very oldest history 
)f France ? and what means are there of knowing any thing 
ibout these Franks and Merovingians ? 

Mrs. M. The Chronicles of Gregory, bishop of Tours, 
contain the most ancient and valuable records of the history 
of the conquerors of Gaul : he died in 595. ■ And after liim 
the next best guide, of the French historians, is Fredegarius, 
who comes down to the middle of the seventh century. 

Ricliard. Were these old chronicles written in French ? 

Mrs. M. No, ray dear, they were wTitten in Latin : tho 
language we now call French did not at that time exist. The 
French language has been wrought out gradually, in the lapse 
of years, from a mixture of the languages which were at dif- 
ferent periods introduced into Gaul by the different nations 
who settled there. The language of the most ancient inhab- 
itants was Celtic : this, under the Romans, became mixed 
with Latin, and from its Roman origin has been called Ro 
manesque. The Franks spoke the Tudesque, a dialect of ths 
German. This by degrees became mixed with the Celtic- 
Latin of the Gauls, which produced another change in the 
language of the people ; and at last these have aU blended 
together and formed the basis of what we now call French , 
\ut I shall have more to say on this subject as our history 
^oceeds. 

Richard. The Romans would hardly Imow their own 
latiguage when they heard it with its Celtic mixture in Gaul ? 

Mt%. M a Roman would hardly have known his own 



CoNV.] ACCESSIOiy jF CHARLEMAGNE n 

language had he heard it at Rome in the times we are spf ak- 
wg of. Pure Latin ceased to be the vernacular tongue even 
in Italy after the irruptions of the barbarians. It has, how- 
ever, as you know, been preserved to the learned in books. In 
many countries the laws were written in Latin ; and Latin 
was the only language employed by authors. 

Richard. Nay, mamma, not the only language : you for- 
got that you told us in your History of England of a book 
written in S axon, as long ago as this. 

Mrs. M. You are very right ; I had, indeed, forgot that 
very curious record, the old Saxon Chronicle. And this brings 
to my recollection another very curious book which is written 
in the Gothic language. It is a translation of the Gospels, 
written in the year 376, by Ulphilas, one of the earliest Chris 
tians among the Visigoths. This book, or rather the fragments 
of it, were discovered some time in the sixteenth century, hid- 
den in the library of a monastery in Germany. It is called 
the Silver Book, from having, I believe, some of the letters 
ornamented with silver. 

George. Pray, mamma, did the mayors of the palace live 
in the palace with the king ? 

Mrs. M. The name may reasonably lead you to suppose 
so : but if the mayors did live in a palace, it was probably in 
a splendid one of their own. The office was one of the high 
est dignity among the Franks, and was in reality that of chief 
judge and governor of the affairs of the state. The name 
originated from two old German words, mord-dome, which 
meant y^cZge of murders. After the Franks were masters of 
Gaul, and had picked up some Latin words which they adopted 
into their own language, they Latinized this mart-dome into 
}najor-domus, which the modern French have metamorphosed 
into mayor of the palace. 

Richard. Those Franks seem to have been a very cruel, 
wicked set of people. Had they no laws for the punishment 
of crimes ? 

Mrs. M. There were laws, though they were not much 
regarded. In every village there were persons appointed by 
the feudal lord to administer justice. Sometimes the king 
himself would act as a judge, and would hear causes and pro- 
nounce sentence. Eve^y one, for there were no lawyers in 
those days, pleaded his own cause; Perhaps one reason why 
the laws were so ill kept was that they were not generally 
understood. The Gauls adhered to their own code of laws, 
which was derived from the Roman law ; the Franks to tha 



S8 FKOM CLOVIS TO IHB Chap. 11 

law which they had brought out of Germany, and which wai 
called the SaHc law, from the name of one of their ancient 
iribes. 

Rizhard. Is there not something in this Sahc law about 
«vomen, that they shall never be queens ? 

Mrs. M. The Salic law permitted the king's wife to have 
the name of queen, but allowed no woman to govern or to be 
a queen in her own right. The Franks being a nation of 
warriors, all their laws were adapted to a military state, and 
their lands were always divided into feudal tenures, and held 
en condition of military service. 

Gewge. Then was all France divided into feudal tenures ? 

Mrs. M. Not entirely ; for it should appear that when 
the Franks conquered Gaul they only appropriated a part oi 
the land to themselves, and suffered the original proprietors 
to retain some of their possessions on condition of paying a 
heavy tribute or fine. These lands a man might consider as 
his owm, and might leave them, if he chose, to his daughters, 
if he had any ; but all the land which Clovis took for himself 
and hi3 followers he portioned out into feudal tenures ; and 
this land always devolved to the male heir, it being deemed 
inconsistt-nt with the conditions of service imposed by the 
feudal sys;,em that such lands should be inherited by females. 
One of tht provisions of the Sahc law is thus worded : " The 
Sahc land^ shall never be the inheritance of a woman, but 
always of a man." As a king among the Franks was nothing 
more than a miUtary cMef, this exclusion extended to the 
throne, and in the variety of changes and revolutions that 
tiave occuri.d in France during the twelve hundred years 
isince Clovis, this law has always been observed in its original 
force, no wtman having ever yet ascended the throne of 
France. It is a singular circumstance, that although Franco 
is the only kingdom in Europe where women are forbidden to 
reign, yet in no country have they more interfered with the 
affairs of government, as you will find in the progress of this 
histor) 

Ridiard. "Were those persons who held feudal lands always 
pbliged to be soltJers ? 

Mrs. M. In the first stages of the feudal system they al- 
ways were ; but ds society advanced in civilization, this obli 
gation of military service was found veiy burdensome to the 
vassal, and not always the most eligible lor the lord. It wa s 
then often commuted to other services, and in many instan :e,» 
to the payment of certain fines. A very common case w'i9 to 



CuNV.J ACOESSION OF CHARLEMAQNE. 2» 

Butstilute the condition of furnishing a certain numher of 
knights, in proportion to the quantity of ] and held by the vas- 
sal. So much land as was bound to furnish a single knight 
was called a knight's fee. 

George. This was something like finding a substitute ibr 
the militia, when a man is drawn and does not want to serve 
himself. 

ilifrs. M. This ten^^re was called the tenure by kmght' 
service, and has ceased with the feudal system. The pay- 
ment of a fine, and sometimes the performance of other con- 
ditions, is a species of tenure which subsists to this day, and 
there are many estates in England held by it. So there 
were in France also till the Revolution, s 



CHAPTER III. 

THE CARLOVINGIAN RACE. 

fYears after Christ 741-814. ) 




Charlemagne. 
From a mosaic, now destroyed, made by the order of Pope Leo III. 

The division of the kingdom which Charles had made 
b'3tween-his two sons did not last long. Carloman, in 747, 
mtered a cloister, and Pepin thus became sole monarch. 

Pepin, being fearful lest the people should be averse to the 
total exclusion of the Merovmsfian family from the throna 



!«0 THE CARLOVINGIAN RACE [Chap, lli 

gave Lie title of king to a prince of that race, who is known 
by the name of Childeric III. But the nominal sovereignty 
of Childeric was of short duration, for Pepin, findmg his own 
power sufficiently established, obliged hhn to retire into a 
monastery, and caused himself to be proclaimed king before 
an assembly of the nation, which was held at Soissons. In 
order to render his person sacred and inviolable, he first intro- 
duced at his coronation the ceremony of anointing, and this 
was done with oil from a phial which it was pretended had 
been sent from heaven for Clevis's baptism. This phial was 
ever afterward preserved at Rheims* as a sacred relic, and 
was always us"ed at the coronation of the French kings. 

Pepin was a man of great activity of mind and body, and 
was much respected by his people, although, from the small- 
ness of his stature, they gave him the surname of Pepui le 
Bref. 

About this tune there was a religious war in Italy on the 
subject of mtroducmg images into churches. The early 
Christians had permitted them as a means to concihate their 
pagan proselytes. At first they were regarded as a help to 
devotion, but at length they became objects of adoration 
themselves. A part, however, of the Christian world held 
this worship of images in abhorrence : they refused to suffer 
them in their churches ; and because of their zeal in destroy- 
ing them, they acquired the name of Iconoclasts, from a 
Greek word which signifies image-breaker. 

Astolphus, king of the Lombards, was of the party of tlit, 
tconoclasts, while pope Stephen III. espoused the cause of 
she images. In 753 Stephen came to France to implore the 
lid of Pepin agauist Astolphus ; Pepin, the following spring, 
marched into Italy, and obliged Astolphus to make peace 
with the pope ; but, in 755, the war being renewed, Stephen 
sent to implore Pepin to come again to his assistance, which 
he accordingly did, and obliged Astolphus to surrender to the 
church of Rome Ravenna and a valuable tract of territory 
on the Adriatic, wliich he had taken from the emperor of 
Constantinople, and which was almost the last relic the 
emperors had retained of their western territory. ' 

In 759, Pepin annexed to his oviTi dominions Narbonne 
and a great part of Languedoc, then called Septimania, 
which had been conquered from the Visigoths by the Sara- 
pens. He also acquired the duchy of Aquitaiua, after having 
vanquished and put to death Guiafer, its duke. 

• Northeast of Paris, and to the eastward of SoisgrjM. 



k:D.768.] the CARLOVINGIAN EACE. Si 

Pepin died in 768, leaving two sons, Charles and Carlo- 
man, who, according to the custom of the Franks, succeeded 
their father as joint kings. The brothers agreed so ill to- 
gether, that a civil war was on the point of breaking out 
between them ; but the death of Carloman put an end to the 
competition, and Charles, setting aside liis brother's children, 
assumed the whole monarchy. The name of Charlemagne, 
or Charles the Great, was not given to him till after his 
death ; but we are so much accustomed to know him only 
by that name, that it will be the plainest way for us to adopt 
it immediately. The reign of Charlemagne is a very im- 
portant epoch. It forms the link between ancient and modern 
history, and marks the period v/hen learning and the arts 
were first encouraged in France. The French are, indeed, 
universally proud of this monarch ; and, if we may believe 
their chroniclers, with much reason, for they assure us that 
he was courteous, humane, liberal, laborious, vigilant, and 
sober, a hater of vanity, and a despiser of flattery. All this 
may be true ; and yet, to judge by his actions, I should be 
ioclined to think that his vices very much overbalanced hia 
virtues. But his reigning vice was ambition, and has been 
overlooked in the brilliancy of his conquests. 

Charlemagne's person has been described to us by his 
Bccretary Eginhard, who wrote his hfe, and who tells us that 
he was considerably above six feet in height, and well pro- 
portioned in all respects, excepting that his neck was some- 
v/hat too short and thick, which in those days, when the 
throat was uncovered, was a very conspicuous defect. His ait 
was dignified, but at the same time his manners were social. 

His reign, like that of his father Pepin, was a perpetual 
war. His first enterprise was against the Saxons in 772, 
and was undertaken chiefly on the plea of obliging them to 
abandon paganism and embrace Christianity. This war con- 
tinued with various success for thirty-three years, at the end 
of which time they were completely subdued. 

In 773, Charlemagne marched into Italy, where he had 
been invited by pope Adrian I. to protect liim against Didier, 
king of Lombardy, who had succeeded Astolphus. Charle- 
magne readily entered into this quarrel, for he had already 
made Didier his enemy by having married and soon afterward 
divorced Desiree, the daughter of that king. This enterprise 
of Charlemagne was completely successful. He besieged and 
conquered Pairia, the capital of Lombardy, and made Didiei 
prisoaer. He had before taken Vei'ona, where he found tha 



32 THE CARLOVINGIAN RAGE. [CnAr. Hi 

wiaow and sons of his brother Carloman, whom DiJier had 
taken under his protection. Didier passed the remaindei 
of his life in captivity ; but history is silent as to what be 
came of the children of Carloman. 

The conquest of Pavia was followed by that of the rest of 
Lombar^y, and Charlemagne was crowned at Milan, witli 
the iron crown of the Lombards, by the hands of the pope. 
He then spread his victorious arms over Italy, the whole of 
which submitted to his power, with the exception of that part 
which now forms the kingdom of Naples, and which was 
then governed by independent princes of the Lombard race, 
who had the title of dukes of Beneventum. Charlemagne 
had a great desire to annex this province to his new kingdom 
of Italy, but the dukes of Beneventum fought hard for theii 
independence, and Charlemagne, after a long struggle, was 
obliged to give up the attempt. 

While he was in Italy he confirmed to the pope all the 
rich gifts his father Pepin had made to the holy see, and 
added considerably to them. 

In 778, Charlemagne turned his arms toward Spain, where 
he had been invited by some disaffected chiefs of the Saracen 
conquerors of that country, and he made himself master of a 
considerable tract between the Pyrenees and the river Ebro, 
to which he gave the name of the Marches of Spain. 

As he was crossing the Pyrenees on his return into France 
from, this expedition, he was met at the pass of Roncevallea 
by a party of Gascons, who attacked the rear-guard of his 
army to such advantage, that they carried off his baggage, 
and slew several of his bravest warriors ; and, among others, 
Rolando, his sister's son, a hero who has become famous more 
through the verses of the poets than from any real merits of 
his own. 

During aU this time the war with the Saxons went on. 
Tassilon, duke of Bavaria, who was nephew to Charlemagne, 
supported and encouraged the Saxons, and Charlemagne in 
return entered Bavaria. Tassilon, in his distress, applied foi 
assistance to the Huns, a people who inhabited what was 
then called Pannonia. They were a nation of robbers ; and 
it was their custom to sally forth in bands and pillage all th« 
neighboring states, and then to return and deposit their 
plunder in large inclosed places, which they called Rings or 
Ringes. The Bavarians, irritated at the rashness of thei* 
duke, joined with Charlemagne, and condemned Tassilon to 
death ; but the French monarch c^-^mmuted his punishment 



i.n. 783.] THE CARLOVINGIAN RACE. 3J 

.nto that of perpetual imprisonment in a monastery, and an- 
nexed the duchy of Bavaria to his own dominions. He next 
attacked the Huns, and after a relentless war. which lasted 
eight years, he pushed his conquests to the banlfs of the 
Danube, and got possession of the Ringes, in which he found 
treasures and booty, which it had taken above two hundred 
yaars to collect. 

In 783, Charlemagne's wife, Hildegard, died, and he soon 
afterward married Fastrade, a woman of low birth, but of a 
proud and haughty temper. From this time a great change 
may be traced in his conduct : he became cruel and vindic 
tive, and his own inclination to clemency was often counter 
acted by the violent temper of the queen, whose conduct 
occasioned a disaffection among the nobles ; and in 791, a 
plot was in a;gitation to dethrone Charlemagne in favor of 
one of his natural sons, named Pepin. The conspiracy was 
discovered, and most of the conspirators were punished with 
death. 

In 799, pope Leo III., successor to Adrian, having excited 
the resentment of the people of Rome, they made an attempt 
to assassinate him. Leo fled from Rome, and put himself 
under the protection of Charlemagne, who was then at his 
camp at Paderborn. There is a long account of this inter- 
view, written, it is supposed, by Alcuin, a learned Anglo- 
Saxon, whom Charlemagne had invited to his court, that he 
might be instructed by him in astronomy, rhetoric, and other 
branches of learning. Charlemagne received the pope with 
great respect, and Leo returned, after a time, to Rome, so 
highly gratified by Charlemagne's conduct, that in the fol- 
lowing year he bestowed on him the title of emperor, and 
crowned him with great pomp and ceremony. Leo by this 
act threw off the dependence wliich the popes had hitherto 
been considered to retain on the emperors of the East or of 
Constantinople ; and from this period there were two empires, 
the eastern and western, Charlemagne being the first emperor 
of the West. 

The throne of Constantinople was at that time usurped by 
Irene, the widow of the Emperor Leo. Charlemagne being, 
by the death of his wife, Fastrade, again a widower, entered 
into a treaty of marriage with Irene, for the purpose, as he 
avowed, of uniting the two empires of the East and the West ; 
but while the treaty was pending, the empress was driven 
from the throne by Nicephorus, who was proclaimed emperor 
and thus an end was put to the whole project. 



^4 THE CARLOVINGIAN RACE. [Chap. IU. 

In 804, the Saxons, after their .ong struggle, were totally 
subdued. Many thousands of them were massacred in cola 
blood, and others were taken from their native villages and 
carried into Gaul, and dispersed in different parts of the 
country. 

When Charlemagne appeared to have vanquished all hia 
old enemies, new ones sprung up and attacked him almost on 
his own coast. These enemies were the Normans, a peopia 
who dAvelt on the northern shores of the Baltic, and who, 
under the conduct of a brave leader named Godfrey, made a 
lescent on Frizeland in the year 808. Charlemagne march- 
ed to attack them ; but finding this new enemy much more 
powerful than he had expected, he was glad to make peace 
and return home. 

This great monarch had three sons, Charles, Pepin, and 
Louis, whom, following the example of many of his predeces- 
sors, he associated with himself in his empire, appointing 
Pepin to the kingdom of Italy, and Louis to Aquitania, Gas- 
cony, and the Spanish Marches ; not making them, however, 
independent kings of those countries, but merely governors 
under him during his life, with the prospect of succeeding to 
them, as their own, at his death. Charles, the eldest son, 
had no portion given to him, it being his father's intention 
that he should succeed to all the rest of his dominions ; but 
this division of the empire was prevented by the death of 
Pepin in 811, and of his brother Charles in the following 
year. 

The loss of his two eldest sons afflicted Charlemagne to so 
great a degree, that in a short space of time it reduced him 
!rom the enjoyment of unusual health and strength to suffer 
the extreme ijtifirmities of age. He so entirely lost all bodily 
strength that he could not walk without assistance. In this 
melancholy state he shrunk from the sares of government, 
and wholly occupied himself in works of devotion ; and, 
during the last year of his hfe, he spent his time in the study 
of the Scriptures, in prayers, and in acts of charity. At last 
he fell into such extreme weakness, that he lay for several 
lays unable to swallow any thing excepting a few mouthfuls 
of water. As the moment of his dissolution approached, he 
jfalhered sufficient strength to make the sign of the cross 
■^vith his hand. He then composed himself in his bed, and. 
shutting his eyes, said, " Into thy hands I commend my spir- 
it." As soon as he bad uttered these words, he expired. ; 

Charlemagne di id January 28th, 814, in the seventy-sec- 



A.D. 814.] THE CARLOVMGIAN RACE. K 

mi year of liis age, and the forty-fourth of his reigu ; he -w^aa 
buried at Aix-la-Chapelle, in. a church which he had built 
there after his Italian conquests, on the model of some of 
those which he had found in Lombardy. Eginhard, who has 
described the manner of his interment, tells us that he was 
buried in his imperial robes, with his sword by his side, and 
his crown on his head, and that he had a golden shield and 
scepter at liis feet ; and that, besides all these things, his Bible 
and his pilgrim's purse, which he always carried with him on 
his journeys to Rome, were buried with him. But in the 
year 1001 the tomb was deprived of all its ornaments by the 
emperor Otho III., who disinterred the body, and carried 
away every valuable relic which he could find. The simple 
inscription " Carolo Magno" * on the pavement is all that now 
marks the spot where his remains are deposited. A gold cross 
and a hunting-horn, which are supposed to have belonged to 
him, are preserved at Aix-la-Chapelle. 

Charlemagne had four sons, only one of whom survived 
him, and five daughters. 

At Charlemagne's death, his empire extended to the Ebro 
on the south ; to the Eyder and Vistula, on the east and 
north ; and to the sea on the west ; it included all Italy, with 
the exception of the duchy of Beneventum, the whole of Ger- 
many, with what are now called Hungary, Bohemia, Poland 
and Prussia ; half of Spain, and all France, unless we en 
cept the narrow strip of land occupied by the Bretons, who, 
however, paid him tribute, and acknowledged him as theii 
..sovereign lord. 

Before the time of Charlemagne no fixed era was establish- 
ed from which the date of events was generally reckoned : 
almost every country had an epoch of its own. In the time 
of Charlemagne the years first began to be numbered from 
the birth of our Saviour, which is now called the vulgar era, 
and is universally adopted throughout the Christian world. 
An alteration was also made in the calendar about this pe- 
riod. The ancient Franks had been accustomed to begin 
their year early in March, at the time of their great annual 
meeting. During the reigns of the Carlovingian family the 
'ommencement of the year was changed from March to 
Christmas. It was not till the sixteenth century that it was 
finally fixed at the first of January ; and in England this al- 
teration did not take place till nearly two centuries after it 
<ia.d been adopted in France. Thcs.2 various alterations and 
* To Charles tlie Great. 



36 THE CARLOVINGIAD' RACE. [Chap, lit 

irregutarities add, as you may suppose, very greaty to the 
difficulty of settling precisely the exact date of events 

The Franks, as well as the Gauls, computed time by 
nights, and not by days : indeed, our own terms, fortnight 
and sennight, seem to imply a sunilar custom among our- 
selves — a custom which is supposed to have arisen from the 
pagan worship of the moon. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER HI. 

Ridmrd. And this, mamma, was the great Charlemagne 
of whom the French are so proud ? I am sure he was not 
to be compared with Alfred. 

Mrs. Markham. I quite agree with you, my dear boy 
wc value Alfred because he was a wise king and a virtuous 
man, while the French boast of Charlemagne because he was 
a great conqueror. 

Mary. I am very glad, however, that he made up for all 
his cruelty and conquests by being quite good at last. 

Mrs. M. Alas ! I fear that a few months devoted to prayer 
and penitence made but bad amends for so many years of un- 
restrained violence and ambition. Charlemagne's end, how- 
ever, is a strong instance of how little all the gratifications 
cf the world can avail at the approach of death ; at that aw 
ful moment all human pomps and vanities appear vile and 
contemptible, and the only substantial good is the remem- 
brance of a virtuous and innocent life, and the hope of a 
happy and holy death. 

Ricliard. I3ut notwithstanding Charlemagne's cruelty and 
ambition, there was still some good about him. 

Mrs. M. He was certainly a very extraordinary man, 
especially if we consider the age he lived in : for at the same 
time that he was a great warrior, he was also a patron of 
learning, and an encourager of the peaceful arts, and did 
more than any other monarch of his time toward the civiliza- 
tion of his subjects. One of the chief things I find to admiie 
in Charlemagne is, his careful economy of time : he was not 
only very industrious himself, but he obliged all those who 
^ere about him to be industrious also ; he began the day with 
apportioning to his servants and ministers the appointed 
business they were to attend to ; and when this was done, 
he would, wliile he was dressing, give audience, and hear and 
decide causes. 

Mary. He could not attend much to his dress^^, I think 



Co«v.: THE CARLOVINGIAN RACE. 3J 

JVIrs. IS'I. His dress appears at no time to have engaged 
much of his attention. His clothes were commonly of thu 
plainest fashion ; and, excepting on great occasions, when he 
appeared in his robes of state, his dress differed very little from 
that worn by the generality of tha Franks. At one time he 
wore, as Eginhard tells us, a long flowing cloak ; but finding 
this inconvenient, he adopted the short one, such as was worn 
by the common people. His under dress was of linen, proba- 
bly a sort of shirt, over which he wore a tunic bordered v;ith 
a silk ornament. His legs were covered with a sort of legging 
or stocking, which fitted close by means of cross gartering. 
In winter time he wore, in addition to his dress, a vest made 
of otter skin with the fur on. He was very abstemious in his 
diet, and seldom had more than three or four dishes placed 
before him at dinner : he hked roasted meat in preference to 
any other, and it was the customary ceremony lor one of his 
hunters to bring it up on the spit. ■ I think, my dears, you 
must acknowledge that I am indulging you with very minute 
particulars. 

Richard. So much the better, mamma : I should hke tu 
know all I can of what Eginhard says about him. 

Mrs. M. Well, then ; he says that, while the emperor 
dined, he had always some person to read aloud to him : 
among his favorite books were the works of St. Augustin ; he 
was also very fond of history, more especially the history of 
Jerusalem, which he often had read to him. Charlemagne 
liked to have learned men about him. I have already said 
that he invited our learned countryman Aleuin to his court. 
He founded the University of Paris, which is said to have 
been the first university which was founded in Europe. Char- 
lemagne himself made some progress in many branches of 
learning, but the art of writing he never could acquire, not- 
withstanding he took infinite pains. He always carried writ- 
ing implements about with him, that he might practice at 
every leisure moment ; but, as he began late in life, he never 
could learn to form the letters. 

Mary. How odd it was that he had never been taught to 
WTite when he was a boy I 

Mrs. M. The art of writing was then almost entirely con 
fined to those whose express business it was to be scribes oi 
eecretaries. The higher orders of people wore never taught 
to write, and, indeed, scarcely to read. We are told that 
Charlemagne was very attentive to the education of his chil- 
dren, and had them instructed in all necessary accomplish 



»{? THE CARLOVINGIAN RACE. tCnAP. Hi 

incnts lidt \\-hen these accomplishments come to be enuiner 
ated, -w 3 find that those of the sons consisted of htt^e else than 
hunting and fighting, and those of the daughters in sewmg 
and fepinning. Charlemagne, as you have seen, was a very 
afiectionate father : for his life -wa.s shortened by grief for the 
death of his sons; and he never permitted his daughters to 
marry vt^hilo he lived, for he could not bring himself to part 
with them. 

liicJiard. When you came to that part about the battle 
of Roncevalles, I could not help thinking of the song my aunt 
Lucy sometimes smgs, which begins, 

Sad and fearful was the story of the lioncevalles fight, 
On that fatal field of glory perished many a gallant knight. 

Geor[f;e. And I, too, was ready to exclaim, from " Mai 

mion," 

O ! for a blast of that dread horn 
On Fontarabian echoes borne, 
That to King Charles did come; 
Wlien Roland brave, and Olivier, 
• , And eveiy Paladia and peer, 
On Roncevalles died. 

Mrs. M. The story of the Roncevalles fight has been 
greatly embellished by the poets, particularly by the great 
Italian poet Ariosto : in reality it was little more than a 
skirmish between the rear-guard of Charlemagne's army and 
a body of undisciphned mountaineers. 

Mary. What made the poets take such a fancy to the 
Btory ? 

Mrs. M. It was first made popular by an old book, which 
calls itself the Chronicle of Archbishop Turpin : this book 
was written in the eleventh century, and is altogether ficti 
tious, as there never was an archbishop of that name. It is 
an historical romance, of which Charlemagne is the hero, to 
whom the author ascribes a great many actio»^i that were 
performed by his grandfather, Charles Martel, and the whole. 
is so mixed up with necromantic inventions of" magical homs^ 
winged horses, and enchanters, that it does not even pretend 
to be a true history. 

Mary. Pray, mamma, was Charles Martel a real name 
or a nickname ? 

Mrs. M. Charles was a real name, but Martel was what 
you would call a nickname. It signified a hammer, and was 
given to Charles after the battle of Poitiers, from the force 
with which he there hc,n:mered dovra the Saracens. Mail«j^ 



CoNV.J THE CAELOVINGIAN RACE. 3» 

was the name of a weapon which the ancient Franks used in 
battle, and which resembled a inarteau, or hammer. 

George. It was better to be called a hammer, hke Charles, 
than to be called Pepin the little; for that, I suppose, was 
the meaning of bi ef. 

Mrs. M. Pepin did not seem to like his name any bettei 
than you do ; and having one day heard some of his courtiers 
use it in derision, he determined to show them that, although 
he was little, he was brave and strong ; he accordingly caused 
a lion and a bull to be turned into an arena, and asked which 
of his courtiers would enter the arena and attack these ani 
mals. They all declined risking their lives in such a danger 
ous combat. On this, Pepin entered the arena, and slew them 
both ; he then returned to his courtiers, who never afterward 
ridiculed him because he was not so tall as themselves. 

Ricliard. Pray, mamma, were there any parliaments 
held in France so long ago as Charlemagne ? And who 
made and regulated the Jaws at the time you are now come 
to? 

Mrs. M. The laws were at that time regulated pretty 
much by the king's will. The ancient Franks had an annual 
meeting, at which all the wars for the coming year were regu- 
lated, and the tribute due to the king was usually brought to 
him. These meetings were originally held in March, which 
was the beginning, as I told you, of the old French year, and 
were called the Fields of March ;* afterward the time of meet- 
ing was in the month of May, and these meetings were then 
called the fields of May.f Besides these aimual assemblies, 
there were, in the time of Charlemagne, frequent meetings 
held by the bishops and nobles, for discussing the business of 
ihe state : there were, also, lesser provincial parliaments for 
the regulation of the affairs of each province. 

Mary. Did they begin to build handsome churches in 
those days ? 

. Mrs. M. The churches were, in general, very humble edi- 
fices, excepting in those places where the old heathen teilflples 
were appropriated to that purpose : even these had not much 
interior decoration. Bells were first used in the time of Char- 
lemagne, who also, as I have already told you, built the 
r*hurch at Aix-la-Chapelle, in which he was buried. The 
Lombard churches, from which he copied, were built in inri- 
tatiou of tlie cathedral of Santa Sofia in Constantinople. 

* Le« Champs de Mars. 
t Les Champs de Mai. 



40 mei CAELOVINGIAN RACE. LCniP. IIJ 

Richard. Pray, mamma, what was tie beginning of the 
popes in E-ome ? 

Mos. M. To answer your question in full wpuld lead me 
into a long historical discussi6n : I will, however, try to ex 
plain, as briefly as I can, the origin of the papal authority 
The word pope is derived from the Greek word pape, or fa- 
ther ; and is given to the bishops of Rome to express their 
pre-eminence over all other bishops. A bishop, I need not 
tell you, is a head of the clergy. Saint Peter is said by the 
JR. Oman clergy to have been the first bishop of Rome ; and in 
allusion to our Saviour's words, that Saint Peter shall cany 
the keys of heaven, the succeeding bishops of Rome have af- 
fected to consider themselves as his successors, and pretend 
that they also carry the keys of heaven. This persuasion, 
whi6h has led to shocking abuses, gave wonderful influence 
to the bishops of Rome in ignorant and superstitious times, 
and caused them to be regarded as God's vicegerents upon 
earth. Thus, from a small beginning, the popes acquired 
great power in every state in Christendom, and often governed 
despotically the most powerful monarchs. 

George. Thanks to our king Harry the Eighth, the pope 
does not govern us : but can you tell us nothing more about 
Charlemagne? 

Mrs. M. I think I have told you a great deal ; and I really 
do not recollect any thing more, unless, indeed, I tell you that 
he received a present of a curious machine for measuring time 
by water, as a mark of respect from the Caliph Haroun ai 
Raschid. 

Richard. Haroun al Raschid ! I did not know that he was 
a real man ; I thought he was only one of the people of the 
Arabian Nights Entertainments. 

Mrs. M. He was a real man, nevertheless, and a veiy 
great man too : he reigned over the Arabians from the year 
786 to 807, and was a most accomplished prince, and a great 
encourager of learning. It is singular that while Europe was 
plunged in ignorance and barbarism, the Arabians were a 
polished and intelligent people, and attained to extraordinary 
pre-eminence in the sciences and in all the liberal arts ; and 
it was through them, as I shall have occasion to show you in 
its proper place, that learning found its way into Europe, and 
(to make use of a common comparison) rekindled the lamp of 
knowledge which had been long extinguished. It is «till more 
singular, that while the Europeans have, since that time, gone 
on advancing in a progressive state of improvemep^ the Ara- 



Coxv.J THE CARLOVINGIAN RACE. , 4j 

bians, as weJl as the rest of the people of the East, aio exactly 
in the same state they weie in in the time of the Caliph Ha 
roun al Raschid. 

Gem-ge. I should like to know what these machines were 
like for measuring time : I wonder if the wheels were turned 
by water ? 

Mrs. M. These clocks, I should imagine from the descrip- 
tions I have read of them, were something on the plan of an 
hour-glass : the water was contained in a basin which had 
very small holes at the bottom, through which the water 
dropped into another basin, the sides of which were markedl 
with lines to show -the hours. The water-clock which 
Haroun al Raschid sent to Charlemagne was, however, on 
a much more complicated plan : it is described as having 
twelve doors within it, and at each door was placed a small 
armed figure, which opened and shut the door according as 
the hours revolved, and also, by means of some mechanical 
contrivance, struck the time upon a metal bell. 

Richard. I suppose it was hke the figures which struck 
the hours at St. Dunstan's church in London ? 

Mis. M. I can not explain to you hoto it was done ; but 
probably it was not by means of what we now call clock- 
work. The first great clock which was seen at Paris was 
erected in the year 1372. 

Mary. I must just say one thing more : you mentioned 
something about an iron crown of Lombardy ; now, I thought 
kings never wore any thing but golden crowns. 

Mrs. M. I can assure you the Lombards valued their 
crown as much as if it had been made of the most precious 
metals ; their kings were always crowned with it. 

Mary. 1 thinlc it must have been a very heavy, ugly 
thing. 

Mrs. M. I must acknowledge that it was not very orna- 
mental, being merely a circle of iron : however, it may com- 
fort you, Mary, to know that the iron was gilded. It was 
also said to be made of the nails by which our blessed 
Saviour was fastened to the cross. It is still preserved at 
Monza, near Milan, and has often, and I believe commonly. 
been used in the coronation of subsequent emperors. You 
will be told hereafter that Napoleon was crowned with it 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE C ARLOVINGIAN RACE— CONTINUEC 
[Years after Christ, 814-844J 




Ladies of the Twelfh Century. 

Charlemagne had been so much occupied by his foreign 
coaquests that he had bestowed very httle attention on his 
French subjects, whom he seldom visited. Indeed it is said 
that he had a dishke not only to them, but also to their 
country, and to their language, which he would not permit 
to he spoken in his court. The people of France therefore 
hailed with joy the accession of Louis, the sole surviving son 
-of Charlemagne, to his father's dominions. Louis had lived 
from his childhood in Aquitain,* of which province he was 
king, and had made himself so greatly beloved by his gentle- 
ness and sweet temper, .hat his subjects gave him the sur- 
name of le Debonnaire, or the Good-natured. 

He was thirty-six years old when his father died. In his 
way from Toulouse to Aix-la-Chapelle,t where he went tc 
take possession of his father's capital, be was every where 
received with acclamations of joy by the inliabitants of thfj 
provinces through which he passed, who hoped that all the 
grievances and oppressions which they had suffered during 
the ambitious reign of Charlemagne would be redressed under 

* lu the Bouthwestern part of France, where Gascogne is marked npoD 
the map. 

♦ Near the Rhine, northeast of France. 



v.D. Sir, ] THE CARLOVINGIAN RACE. 43 

the milder sway of his son. But, alas I mere good temper 
and good intentions, without the assistance of sense and judg- 
ment, will not suffice to lead men to great and good actions , 
and in sense and judgment le Debonnaire was, unhappily for 
himself and his subjects, miserably deficient. 

In 816 he received the imperial crown from the handr? 
of pope Stephen IV., and the following year he associated 
with himself in the empire his eldest son Lothaire. His two 
younger sons, P(;pin and Louis, he made kings of Aquitain 
and Bavaria. 

Hermengard, his first wife, being dead, he married, in 819, 
Judith, daughter of the count of Bavaria. By her he had a 
son named Charles, who was born in 823 ; and to bestow a 
portion on this child he attempted to deprive his elder sons 
of a part of the inheritance which he had previously assigned 
to them. This excited the resentment of these princes : they 
rose in rebellioA against their father, and the rest of the reign 
of Louis was nothing but a succession of contests with his 
turbulent sons. He died in 840, in the sixty-third year of 
his age, and in the twenty-seventh of his reign. In his dying 
moments his favorite son Charles occupied his chief thoughts. 
He had first made him king of Germany. Afterward, Louis 
had Germany, and Neustria and Burgimdy were given to 
Charles. Pepin had already died in 838. 

The Normans still continued to make piratical attacks ou 
the coasts of France and Flanders. 

The Spanish marches were at this period separated forever 
from the ^rown of France, by Inigo, count of Bigorre, who 
took advantage of the weakness of the government, occa- 
sioned by the disturbances between Louis and his sons, to 
seize on that portion of Spain which afterward formed the 
kingdoms of Arragon and of Navarre, and made himself an 
independent monarch. 

The glory of the Carlovingian race had expired with 
Charlemagne. The succeedmg branches of his family, by 
their folly and vices, destroyed the vast fabric of power which 
their great ancestor had raised, and sank gradually mto the 
utmost contempt. The history of their " decline and fall" is 
tt very unpleasing part of the French history ; I will there- 
fore pass it over as briefly as I can. 

INo sooner was le Debonnaire dead, than Lothau'e began to 
lispute with Charles the possessions which their lather had in 
flis life-time bestowed on him. Louis, now the second brother. 
took the part of Charles. They encountered Lothaire on June 



44 THE CARiiOVINGIAN RAUH. LChai tV 

25, 841, at Fontenay, near Auxerre,* where was fought on« 
of the most bloody battles that ever desolated France. Histo- 
rians differ as to the precise number of the slain, but they all 
agree that the loss sustained on that fatal day reduced the 
country to a state of weakness which rendered it impossible 
to make any adequate defense against the Normans, who stiH 
continued to harass the coasts. 

The victory remained to Charles, but his army was toe 
much enfeebled to allow him to reap any advantage from it. 
At last the three brothers agreed to terms of accommodation, 
and divided the dominions of their father among them. 

The kingdom of Italy was confirmed to Lothaire, who had 
aheady received the imperial crown from the pope. He had 
also some portion of the south of France, a part of Burgundy, 
and that part of Austrasia, or eastern France, which, from 
the word Lotharingia, or land of Lothaire, is now called 
Lorraine. 

Bavaria, and all that is properly Germany, fell to the share 
of Louis, who is commonly distinguished by the title of Louis 
the German. Every thing not included in the districts thus 
allotted to Lothaire and Louis was yielded to Charles, who 
was crowned king of France by the title of Charles II., to 
which was added the surname of the Bald.f 

Aquitain was included in Charles's share, but he did nol 
gain possession of it till 863 ; that province having been re 
tained by a son of his deceased brother Pepin, who was at 
last obliged to give it up by his own nobles, who, disgusted 
at Ms drunkenness and other vices, delivered him into his 
uncle's power. 

T must now tell you something of the invasion of the Nor- 
mans. These people, who had issued originally from the 
i^,oasts of Norway and of Denmark, had taken advantage 
of the perturbed state of France to carry on their ravages 
without intermission. They never sought to acquire terri- 
tory, but contented themselves with pillaging and destroying 
every thing near the coast, and then returned to their ships 
and sailed back to their own country, but only to come again 
some future time. Their earher depredations only extended 

* South and a little to the east of Paris. 

t Le Chauve. The earlier French monarchs of tho name of Charles 
are counted differently by different writers. Charlemagne often, perhaps 
naually, stands at the head of the list as Charles I. Charles le Gros (see 
pp. 45, 46) is often left out. Charles le Bel is always reckoned as Charloa 
IV. M. Koch thinks that Charlemagne and Louis le Debonnaire sbou'd 
most properly be ranked as Frankish emporors, and that the list or th« 
kdnsrs of France should begin with Charles la Chauvn. 



A.D. 845.] THE CARLOVINGIAN RACE. 4* 

a little way inland ; but after they had learned the use of 
horses, to which it appears they were at first unaccustomed, 
they -^vere enabled to carry their inroads to a considerable 
distance, and spread terror into the very heart of the country. 
The churches and monasteries became more particularly the 
common object of their attacks, as being the general reposi- 
tories of the riches of the country. The monks concealed 
themselves as well as they could : those who could not con 
eeal themselves were murdered, and the survivors generally 
found, on emerging from their hiding-places, on the retre|,t 
of the robbers, that their monasteries were a heap of ruins. 
Besides this pillaging of the churches and monasteries, the 
Normans commonly destroyed also all the books and records 
they foimd there. 

In 845 the Normans sailed up the Seine to Paris, which 
they sacked and plundered, and even carried off the timber 
of which the houses were built. Charles opposed no resist- 
ance to these marauders, but prevailed with them to retire 
by a bribe of seven thousand pounds weight of silver ; but 
this, as you will easily believe, only made them the more 
eager to return. 

The emperor Lothaire died in 855. He was of a restless 
and capricious temper, and neither enjoyed peace nor could 
suffer others to enjoy it while he lived. He left three .sons, 
who all died young, leaving no children ; and Charles with- 
out difficulty made himself master of Italy, and was crowned 
emperor by pope John VIII. 

In 876 Louis the German died, having governed his king- 
dom with great wisdom and prudence. He left his dominions 
among his three sons, Carloman, Louis, and Charles. Charles 
the Bald marched an army into Germany in hopes to dispos- 
sess his nephews ; but he found them well prepared to defend 
their territories, and in the first attack he was repulsed and 
put to flight. 

Charles had four sons, Louis, Charles, Lothaire, and Car- 
loman. The two eldest proved rebeUious and disobedient " 
the two youngest their ftither destined to be ecclesiastics, un- 
der the idea that the dedication of his sons to the service of 
God would be an expiation of his own sins. Lothaire, who 
was lame, reconciled himself to his lot ; but Carloman, being 
of an active disposition, would not submit to a monastic life. 
He renounced his vows, and, flying to Belgium, assembled a 
band of lawless soldiers, and devastated the surrounding coun- 
try. He was at last taken prisoner, was convicted of having 



46 THE CA.RLOVINGIAN RACE. [Chap, 1"? 

broken his vows, and condemned to have his eyes put out : he 
afterward found means to escape from prison, and found an 
asylum with his imcle, Louis the German, who was then 
aUve. Carloman, Charles, and Lothaire all died yomig, and 
the emperor had now only one son left, Louis, who Avas of 
very defective understanding. 

In 877 Charles the Bald was taken iU in his return out 
of Italy into France, and died in the passage of Mont Cenis> 
in a miserable hut by the wayside. His Jewish physician, 
S^decias, was suspected of having poisoned him. 

An old historian says of this king, that he loved pomp 
and grandeur ; and that " Fortune, in conformity to his hu- 
mor, made him happy in appearance, and miserable in leaH 
ty." An 1 this, I doubt not, may be also said of many kings 
besides. 

It was in the reign of Charles the Bald that the Gauls and 
Franks first began to assimilate together as one people, and to 
use one common language. 

Louis II., surnamed the Stammerer,* reigned not quite two 
years ; and no event of importance occurred during his reign. 
He died in 879, leaving two sons, Louis and Carloman. A 
posthumous son was bom some months after his death, who 
was called Charles. 

Louis was crowned king of Neustria, and Carloman had 
Aqiiitain ; the rest of the dominions of the late emperor 
were abandoned to the sons of Louis the German, excepting 
Provence and a part of Burgundy, which were seized on by 
Bozon, count of Provence, who had married a daughter of the 
emperor Louis Ix. Bozon was crowned by pope John VIII., 
and proved a wise and politic king. This little kingdom of 
Provence, or, as it is sometimes called, of Aries, flourished for 
several centuries, and, while it lasted, was the focus of all that 
was refined and elegant in France. 

The two young kings, Lcuis and Carloman, both died 
premature and accidental deaths ; the one in 882, the other 
ill 884. 

Charles, their posthumous brother, being only five yeara 
old when Carloman died, was considered as too young to suc- 
ceed to the crown : it was therefore offered to Charles, the 
youngest, and at this time the only surviving son of Louis 
the German. Charles, who, on account of his corpulence, 
had received the surname of the Fat,t had already received 
e imperial crown from the pope ; and now, witli the ex.C(5j> 
'LeBegue t Le Gro«. 



CoNV.] THE CARLOVINGIAN RACE. ¥f 

tioii of the newly-formed kingdoms of Arragon and of Prov- 
ence, reunited the dismembered empire of Charlemagne. 

Among the Norman depredators who invaded France at 
this time, we find the famous Hastings, who also made him 
self well known and dreaded in England. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER IV. 

Ricliard. I did not know that Hastings was a Norman ; 
I always thought he had been a Dane. 

Mrs. Markham. The Danes and Normans wore the same 
people : the name of Norman was a corruption of the word 
northnian. 

George. It seems to me very strange that the people 
should let those Normans or Northmans keep coming and 
coming, and never try to keep them away. 

Mrs. M. France at that period was, from one cause or 
other, nearly destitute of men able to contend v/ith those 
invaders. 

George. What was become of all the fighting men ? had 
they been killed in battle ? 

Mrs. M. There were men enough, doubtless, still left. 
but their character and condition were changed. The spirit 
of the lower sort was broken and depressed : the middlfl 
classes no longer exhibited that warlike character that had 
distinguished the ancient Franks. The nobles, instead of 
uniting against the common enemy, wasted their strength in 
petty wars among each other, and in engaging in the quarrels 
and contentions of the royal family. In addition to these 
causes, we must recollect that a great portion of the landed 
property of the country vras in the hands ol" ecclesiastics, and 
mltivated by slaves, who were not permitted the use of arms , 
all which will easily account for the scarcity of brave men a1 
that time, and for the little opposition which the Normans 
met with. 

Ricliard. But stiU, I think, if there had been a king who 
had either sense or spirit, he might have mustered soldiers 
enough to have kept out these Norman thieves. 

Mrs. M. Unhappily for France, her kings at that time 
had neither " sense nor spirit." The character of the sover- 
eigns during this disastrous period was equally debased with 
that of the people. We are told that the peasantry were so 
completely enfeebled and without energy, that they did not 
fiv^u attempt to protect themselves frcm the w(\lv«is, which, 



<8 THE CARLOVINGIAN RACE. L^hap. IV 

consequently, increased to such an alarming degree, that 
thej ranged the country in packs of two or three hundred at 
a time. 

Mary. Really, poor creatures, what with wolves and Nor 
mans, they seem to have been in a miserable condition. 

Mrs. M. Nothing conveys a stronger idea of the terror 
the people had of the Normans, than the following clause in 
the church Litany which was used at that time : " From the 
fury of the Normans, good Lord, deliver us !" 

RicJiard. Even we may say that we suffer from the 
fury of the Normans ; for if they had not destroyed all the 
books and records which they fomid in the monasteries, wc 
should have known a great deal more of the history of those 
times. 

George. For my part, I don't think such uncivilized times 
were worth knowing any thing about. 

Mrs. M. One chief good of knowing any thing about then) 
is, that we may see what a degraded, wretched being man is 
when he is ignorant and uncivilized, and is left to the guid- 
ance of his passions ; and another good is, to make us sensible 
of the blessing of living in an age like the present, instead 
of an age when 7nigJit overcame right, and a man's will was 
almost his only law. The French, indeed, were at this tima 
going rapidly backward. They knew so little even of theii 
own country, that when the three sons of le Debonnaire 
agreed to diride their father's empire among them, they could 
not attempt to make an equal division till they had first sent 
persons into all the several parts of it to gain a knowledge of 
the size, population, productions, and riches of each district. 
Three hundred persons, we are told, were employed in this 
service ; and as of these there were but few who could write 
or even read, you may imagine the difficulties they had to 
encounter. 

George. And after all their trouble, I dare say I could 
tell much better than they, only by just once looking at thit' 
map of Europe. 

Mrs. M. When we think how very difficult the first steps 
in science must have been to persons who had no previous 
helps, we ought to be very grateful to those whose laborious 
industry has smoothed to us the paths of laiowledge. In the 
times we are now treating of, learning in France, as well as 
m England, was entirely confined to ecclesiastics, the only 
persons wlio could write, and almost 1he only persons who 
could reau 



Con v.] THE CAELOVINOIAN KACE 49 

George. I thought you told us that there were £5"ibes, or 
people whose trade it was to write. 

Mrs. M. I did so ; but I believe I omitted to add that 
these scribes were always priests. Our knowledge of Charles 
the Bald is almost wholly gathered from the account trans- 
mitted to us by his chief counselor, Hincmar, who was arch- 
bishop of Rheims, and who appears, even from his own state- 
ment, to have been a very busy, meddling churchman. The 
priests were also poets as well as historians, and one of them 
wrote a Latin poem in praise of Charles the Bald ; and the 
better to pay his court to the king, he made every word of his 
poem, which consisted of three hundred lines, begin with the 
letter C* 

Richard. He must have made strange, nonsensical stuff 
of it. 

Mrs. M. I can not tell you how well or how ill he suc- 
ceeded ; for, in the first place, I don't understand Latin, and 
in the second place, I have only seen the first line : 

" Caiinina clarisonas Calvi cantate camoBnas." 

Richard. I tliink you. said that Charlemagne would not 
allow the French language to be spoken in his court. Pray 
what language did he speak himself? 

Mrs. M. He spoke German, which was, you know, the 
original language of. the Franks. The Gauls, I have told 
you, spoke a sort of corrupt Latin, wliich, after the Japse of 
some centuries, began to be blended with the German spoken 
by the Franks. But stdl there were two great divisions in 
the language of France ; for in the south, where the Latin, 
or, as it was termed, the Romanesque, was the mother-tongue, 
it varied considerably from that spoken in the north, where 
the German language had a much greater ascendency. 

Richard. I think I understand you, mamma ; that in the 
south it was Latin with a little German, and that in the 
north it was German with a little Latin. 

Mrs. M. You have explained it exactly ; and you will 
easily comprehend that this would make a great difference in 
the two dialects. The one was called langue d'oc, and the 
other was the langue d'oU, or langue d'oui.f 

Mary. I wonder why they gave them such Ou.d names ' 

3Irs. M. They were so called from the word in each Id'u- 
^uage which signified yes. The Italian was at that time 

* The first letter of the word Chanve, which is the French wonl for ba^d- 
*■ Pronounced Langdoc, Langdwoil, and Langdwee. 



60 THE CARLOVINGIAN RACE I Chap. L'P 

called the langue de si, and the German the langue de ya; st 
being Italian, and ya German, for yes. But to return to 
what I was saying about the French languages. The langue 
tVoc, which was that spoken in the south of France, was after- 
ward modified into the Provencal, which was for two or three 
centuries the favorite language of poetry, and of which I shall 
have to speak further when we come to the time of the trou- 
badours. It is now nearly extinct as a living language, 
though it still exists, in a certain degree, in the patois, or 
provincial dialects of the south of France. The langue cVail 
is the root or foundation of what was afterward called the 
French wallon, which varied very little from the best French 
now spoken. 

Gem'ge. Were Italy and Germany, and all the other 
countries where the Carlo vingians reigned, as ill governed as 
France was ? 

Mrs. M. The three great divisions of Charlemagne's em- 
pire experienced very different fortunes, which may, perhaps, 
all be traced to the different characters of their respective 
sovereigns. The government of France, under her supersti- 
tious monarchs, fell almost wholly into the hands of the eccle- 
siastics. In Italy the nobles, who, by the capricious liOthaire 
and his inefficient sons, were set over the several towns and 
provinces, took advantage of the unstable characters of their 
sovereigns to appropriate to themselves and their families the 
governments which had been intrusted to them. If you look 
into the map of Italy, you will see that the country is divided 
into numberless dukedoms and marquisates, which have all 
been independent states in their time ; and this was their 
origin. 

The third division, that of Louis, surnamed the German, 
fell to the share of a just and prudent ruler. Louis, although 
he was in his younger days implicated in the rebellions of hig 
brother Lothaire, has yet left a name very superior to all the 
other princes of his time and family. He interfered very little 
in the quarrels of other states, and had no ambition to extend 
his territories. He lived entirely among his own people, f,nd 
occupied himself with the care of promoting their happiness. 
The consequence was, that the countries he governed wsr« 
rich and prosperous, and the people industrious and conten1fi<3 



CHAPTER V. 

THB CARLOVINGIAN RACE— CONCLUDK© 
[Years after Christ, 834-987.] 




/r/I.Sr- 

Ruins of the Castle of Montlhery. 

The French did not make a fortunate choice in their nsvr 
sovereign. Charles the Fat was not only proud and cowardly, 
flut he also made himself contemptible by his gluttony ; nor 
does he seem to have possessed any redeeming quality. He 
w^as very regardless of his subjects, and did not come near 
them, but left them to defend themselves as well as they could 
against the Normans, who, in 885, made themselves masters 
of Rouen, and laid siege to Paris, Paris, although the capital 
of the kingdom, was an inconsiderable place, and was at this 
time contained within the limits of the little island in the 
Seine, which I have shown you in the map of that city. It 
liad, by the care of a few brave noUes, and more particularly 
by that of Eudes, count of Paris, been put in a good state of 
defense., and held out a long siege. At last Charles, at the 
earnest instance of Eudes, who had gone in person to Pavia 
to entreat his assistance, appeared before Paris with his army , 
but instead of giving the Normans batdc', lie, as Charles th« 



52 THE CARLO VJNGIAN RACE. iChai-, V 

Bald had done before, bribed them with a large sum of money 
to withdraw their troops, and then returned into Germany. 
He soon afterward fell into a state of insanity, and was de- 
Bert ed by his servants and driven from his palace, and would 
have wanted the common necessaries of life, had it not been 
for the compassion of Lieutbart, bishop of Mayemie. This 
unhappy monarch died in 888. 

Charles, the posthumous son of Louis the Stammerer, was 
now, in the male hne, the only one left of the race of Charle- 
magne. There was, indeed, an illegitimate descendant of that 
family, named Arnould, son of Carloman, brother of Louis the 
Fat. On him, in consequence of the failure of other heirs, 
the pope bestowed the imperial crown ; and he thus succeeded 
to the German and Italian dominions of his late uncle. 

As for France, the youth and the evident imbecility of the 
young Charles, which obtained for him the surname of Charles 
the Simple, occasioned his claims to be once more set aside ; 
and Eudes, the brave defender of Paris, was chosen king 
Elis kingdom extended, however, only from the Meuse to the 
Loire. A large portion of the eastern side of France was 
claimed by the emperor Arnulf ; and Ramulf, a descendant 
of Charlemagne by a female line, seized on Aquitain. 

Even the kingdom of Eudes, small as it was, was divided 
into many lesser states, which were possessed by indepen- 
dent nobles, who fortified themselves in their strong castles 
and lived within them like petty kings. Among these the 
counts of Flanders, Vermandois, and Anjou were the most 
powerful. 

In the year 891, the Normans received a severe defeat near 
uouvain,^ in a pitched battle with the emperor Arnulf; and 
after this check they turned their arms on England, thus giving 
France a respite for the time : but the Normans, or Danes, as 
we are accustomed to call them, found a more vigorous an- 
tagonist in England than they had met with in France. This 
was the great Alfred, who at that time reigned over the Anglo- 
Saxons. 

After a time the people of France became dissatisfied with 
Eudes, and complained " that he commanded them to do in- 
supportable things ;" although it does not appear what these 
insupportable things were, unless it was that he required them 
to make a stand and defend themselves against the Normans ; 
and in 893, the count of Vermandois and the archbishop of 
Rhcims took advantage of the absence of Eudes, on an ^ t;po« 
* In Belgium, beyoud the confines of the map. 



A.D. 898.] THE CARLOVINGIAN EACE. 04 

dition against the duke of Aquitain, to crown the son of Louis 
the Stammerer. 

Charles, afterward entitled, as I have told you, "the Sim- 
ple," was, at his coronation, onlj fourteen years old, and his 
youth and incapacity made him unable to take any part in the 
government of his affairs. His party was supported by some 
active and powerful nobles, who, however, merely made uso 
of his name in order to strengthen their own interests against 
Eudes. 

During the next few years the country was greatly disturb- 
ed by the contentions of the two rival parties. At last it wag 
agreed to divide the kingdom between the two kings. Eudes 
continued to rule Paris and its neighborhood, and Charles's 
court was established on the banks of the Moselle.^ 

In 898 Eudes died, and Charles was recognized as sole 
monarch in the whole territory that remained to the crown 
of France. In 911, after a complete blank in the history foi 
several years, of which there are no records whatever, wo 
meet with the first notice of the celebrated RoUo, a leader 
among the Normans, who appeared on the coasts of France, 
and threatened to desolate the whole country. Charles, we 
are told, offered to cede to RoUo an extensive terri cory between 
the Seine and the sea, on condition that he and his people 
would forbear to molest any other part of France. He also 
offered RoUo his daughter in marriage, provided he would be- 
come a Christian. RoUo agreed to both these proposals. He: 
and his Normans, who aU followed his example, were baptized, 
and settled themselves in that part of Neustria, which is now 
called Normandy. t Rollo had the title of duke, and was re- 
quired to do homage to the king of France, and to acknowl- 
edge his duchy as a fief of the crown. He was also chosec 
one of the twelve peers of France. 

Rollo kept faithfully the promise of never molesting tlip 
other territories of France, and he defended successfully the 
coasts of Neustria from the future attempts of his piratical 
countrymen, who in time ceased their invasions. Thus 
Normandy proved a protection against the Normans ; and 
the cession of that province, which was caused by the weak- 
'ness of the sovereign, proved, after all, a very politic meas 
lire. 

Rollo portioned out his new territories in feudal tenures 
among his followers, and applied himself to make laws and 

* The Moselle flows from the northenstem part of France into the Rhine, 
1 A province in the northern part of France. 



114 THE OARLOVINGIAN EACB [Chaf. V 

regulations Tradition says that he gave his people a chai 
ter, which secured, in like manner with our Magna Charti,, 
the liberty of the subject. He established a supreme tribunal 
(a sort of parliament), and applied himself with an ardor 
which appears to have been a part of the Norman character, 
to cultivate and embellish his territory, which had been re- 
duced to the condition of a desert by the ravages to which it 
had been so long exposed. Under this good government il 
became in a short time the most fertile and flourishing prov- 
ince of France. Rollo died in 932, and was succeeded by his 
Bon William Longsword,* who was a brave and prudent 
prince, Uke his father. 

But I must return to the affairs of poor simple king Charles, 
who exasperated the people of France by his folly, and by 
ailowing a man of low birth, named Haganun, to obtain an 
undue influence over him. In 923, Robert, brother to thb 
iate king Eudes, appeared in arms, and caused himself to be 
proclaimed king ; but being soon after killed in battle, his 
name has never been enrolled among the French kings. 

Robert left a son Hugh, sumamed the Fair,t who seemed 
BO little ambitious of sovereignty, that he caused the crown 
to be given to Raoul, or Rodolph, one of the dukes of Bur- 
gundy $ (for Burgundy was at that time divided into three 
dukedoms), who had married his sister. 

Rodolph's title was acknowledged by the rest of the 
nobles, and Charles was confined as a prisoner in the Chateau 
Thierry. His queen Elgiva, who was sister to Athelstan, 
king of England, fled for protection to her brother, taking 
"with her Louis, her only child, then a boy about nine years 
old. 

In 929 Charles died, poisoned, as was supposed, by the 
count de Vermandois. Rodolph survived him about six 
years. He interfered very little with the afi'airs of France, and 
every thing was under the management of Hugh the Fair. 
Rodolph died in 936, leaving no children. At last Hugh, 
after an interregnum of some months, sent a deputation to 
England, inviting Elgiva and her son to return. Athelstan 
endeavored to dissuade his sister and nephew from going to 
France, being fearful that some treachery was intended to- 
ward them. His apprehensions, however, were unfounded. 
Louis, when he landed in France, was received with the 
greatest respect by Hugh, who conductffd him to Rheims, 

* Longue Epee t Le Blanc. 

East of the center of France. 



k D. 930.J THE CARLOVINGIAN RACE. 5i 

where he was crowned by the name of Louis IV"., to which 
was added the surname of " the Stranger."* 

Louis was very superior, both in abiUties and courage, to 
any of his predecessors since Charlemagne ; but he wanted 
honesty and sincerity, and consequently his abihties were but 
of little service either to himself or his country. 

The German branch of the Carlovingian family had be- 
come extinct on the death of Louis, son of the emperor Ar- 
nulf ; and the imperial dignity was now vested in a German 
family, the founder of which was Henry the Fowler, a sur- 
name which he acquired from having been engaged in the 
arnusement of fowling when he was told that he was elected 
emperor. This Henry left a son, named Otho, a very active 
and powerful prince, who raised the dignity of the empire to 
a higher pitch than it had known since the days of Charle- 
magne. Otho had two sisters, one of whom was the wife of 
Hugh the Fair ; Gerberg, the other, in 939, married Louis 
the Stranger. 

Hugh, though he .had invited the return of Louis, was de- 
sirous still to govern the kingdom as he had been accustomea 
to do ; but to this Louis would not submit ; and Hugh, 
being joined by William Longsword, duke of Normandy, and 
other powerful nobles, a civil war began, which lasted several 
years. 

Arnulf, count of Flanders, took the part of the Idng ; and 
having a private quarrel with the duke of Normandy, assas- 
sinated him, with circumstances of great treachery. Will- 
iam left a young son named Richard ; Louis, under pretense 
of having him educated at his court, got the poor boy into 
his power, and would have put him to death at the instiga- 
tion of the count of Flanders, whose revengeful temper was 
not contented with killing the father ; but the young duke 
was rescued from the hands of his enemies by the courage 
and ingenuity of Osmond, his governor. 

His rescue was effected in the following mamier : Hich- 
ard, who was at this time staying with Louis in his castle at 
Laon, was instructed by Osmond to feign himself ill, and to 
keep his bed. One evening, while the king and all his at- 
tendants were at supper, Osmond took the child cut of his 
bed, and, concealing him in a truss of hay, put him on hia 
back, and pretending that he was going to feed his horse — an 
office which was then very commonly performed by the great* 
est r.obles to a favorite steed — he carried the chi).d, unper 

• jy Outrrmer, meaning froin beyond, sea. 



66 THE OAKLOVINGIAN EACE. [CHiP. V 

Boived, out of the castle. When he had got qiite clear of 
the to^vn, he found his attendants ready with liorses : they 
mounted, and reached the town of Couci in the mid(fJe of 
the night ; from thence he conveyed his charge to his mater- 
nal uncle, the count de Senlis, who took him under his pro- 
tection. 

The count de SenHs contrived, in 945, by liis bravery and 
address, to make Louis himself prisoner, and would not re- 
lease him until he had restored several places in Normandy, 
which, availing himself of the adverse circumstances of the 
young duke, he had unjustly seized on. Pvichard was at last 
fully established in his dukedom. He married Anne, the 
daughter of Hugh the Fair, and acquired the surname of 
ilichard the Fearless. He is celebrated by the Norman his- 
torians for his goodness and piety, and also for the nobleness 
and beauty of his person, and for the long beard and white 
hair for which he seems to have been remarkable in his latter 
years. Some time before his death he caused a stone coffin 
to be made, and placed in the church, of Fecamp. Every 
Friday this was filled with wheat, which, together with a 
weekly donation of money, was distributed among the poor. 
When he died he ordered his body to be placed in this stone 
coffin, and desired that it might not be buried, but placed on 
the outside of the church under the eaves, " that," as his own 
words expressed it, " the drippings of the rain from the holy 
roof may wash my bones as I lie, and may cleanse them from 
the spots of impurit}'' contracted in my negligent and neglect- 
ed life." 

Louis the Stranger died m 954, from the effects of a fall 
from his horse, as he was spurring after a wolf which crossed 
his road in traveling between Laon and Rheims. He was in 
the thirty-third year of his age, and left two sons, Lothaire 
and Charles. 

As Charles was only a few months old, the undivided king- 
dom was conferred on Lothaire ; and from tliis time the cus- 
tom ceased of dividing the kingdom among the sons of the 
deceased monarch, and was never afterward revived. 

Lothaire, who was only fourteen years old when he began 
to reign, was for some years under the tutelage of liis mother 
and her brother, who for liis sanctity has been canonized, un- 
der the name of Saint Bruno. It is mentioned, as a remark- 
able circumstance, that there was no civil war m France foi 
the space of three years. 

la 956 Hugh the Fair died, having, as his jontempo 



A..D. 973.] THE CAKLOVINGIAN RACE. 5J 

raries said, reigned many years, though without the tiLe oi 
king. 

In 973 the emperor Otho the Great died, and was suc- 
ceeded by liis son Otho II. Lothaire, on his uncle's death, 
claimed a part of Lorrame* in right of his mother, and, 
without waiting to declare war, marched directly to Aix-la- 
Chapelle, where the young emperor was then residing. Otho 
was taken so completely by surprise, that he was obliged to 
rise from table, where he was sitting at dinner. He mounted 
a fleet horse, and escaped out of one gate as Lothaire and hig 
army entered at another. Lothaire stripped the palace of 
every thing in it wliich was worth carrying off, and then 
returned to France. This event took place in the month of 
June, 978 ; and in the following October, Otho, burning with 
resentment against Lothaire, set out, as he expressed it, " to 
return the visit." He proceeded straight to Paris, destroying 
every thing in his way. 

Hugh Capet, the son of Hugh the Fair, had succeeded his 
father as count of Paris, and had put the town in such a good 
state of defense, that Otho found himself unable to effect any 
thing against it ; he therefore contented himself with empty 
menaces. Among other things he sent word to Hugh, " That 
he would make him hear so loud a litany as would make his 
ears tingle." Accordingly, he posted his army on the heights 
of Montmartre, which overlook Paris, and there he made liis 
soldiers sing a Latin canticle as loud as they could. The 
noise of so many thousand voices all bawling at once was so 
prodigious, that it could he heard from one end of Paris to 
the other. 

Having performed this mighty feat, the emperor turned 
about to march back into Germany. He reached the banks 
of the river Aisne t without having met vnth any opposition : 
it was late when he arrived at the river, and only he him 
self, wdth part of his army, could cross that night. The re&t 
were to cross the next morning ; but when the morning came, 
it was found that the water had risen so considerably in the 
night, that it was impossible for the second division of the 
army to pass. In this situation it was attacked by Lothaire ; 
and Otho, from the opposite shore, saw his men put to tha 
rout without being able to give t'lem any assistance. At 
length he procured a little boat, and sent over the count of 
A.rdcnnes to propose that he and Lothaire should seltle thei; 

• In the r.ortheast part of r'rance, on the borders oi Othp"* doaiiotnng. 
t A short distance northeast of Paris. 



58 THE CAKLOVINGIAN RACE. (Chap. V 

diflerences by single combat, with the conditioA, that which 
ever of them was the survivor should succeed to the terri- 
tories of the other ; but the French nobles would not permit 
Lothaire to accept this challenge, and desired the count to 
inform his master that they did not wish to lose their own 
king ; and that, at any rate, they would never have Otho 
over them. 

Some time after this a treaty of peace was made between 
the cousins, and Otho consented to give up Lorraine to 
Lothaire and his brother Charles. 

In 986 Lothaire died, leaving ajj only son, Louis V., often 
called the Sluggard, who was ol such weak capacity, that al- 
though he was twenty years old, he was incapable of govern- 
ing, and was placed under the guardianship of Hugh Capet. 

Louis V. reigned little more than a year, and his uncle, 
Charles, duke of Lorraine, was now the sole male survivor 
of the house of Charlemagne ; but his character was alto- 
gether so worthless and contemptible, that the nobles of 
France excluded him from the succession, and placed th* 
crown upon the head of Hugh Capet. 

Thus ended the succession of the Carlovingian kings, which 
had lasted for a period of 246 years. Never was there a race 
of weaker princes. By their folly and cowardice they had 
suffered the kingdom to be so much dismembered, that it wis 
latterly reduced to little more than the mere territory which 
lay immediately round Rheims and Paris. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER V. 

RicJiard. I wonder why Hugh the Fair, who seemed to 
have the giving away of thft croAvn of France, never thought 
of putting it upon his own head. 

Mrs. Markham. He probably thought of it several times ; 
but it is supposed that he was withheld either by the jealousies 
of the other nobles who were unwilling that he should make 
himself superior to themselves, or else by his own moderation. 
He is said to have been the greatest man who never wore a 
crown. He was married three times, and each of his wives 
was a kinj,''s daughter. His first wife was daughter of Louis 
the Stammerer : the second was a daughter of the king of 
England : and the third was sister to the emperor Otho. 
Hugh left four sons ; one of them was, as you have just heard, 
king of France, and the other three were successively dukes 
of Burgundy. Hugh had several surnames by which ho wa« 



OU.HT , THE CARLO VINGIAK RACE 5S 

indiscriminately called : the Fair, from the color of his coni' 
plexion ; the Great, from his great height ; and tlie Abbot, 
hecause of the number of abbeys he was possessed of 

Mary. Then was he a priest, besides all this ? 

Mrs. M. You may very naturally ask that question 
Though not a priest, he yet held several abbeys ; for the 
kings of France were at this time so much reduced, that 
they had nothing but church property left to bestow, when 
they wished to conciliate or reward any of their nobles. 

George. I could not bear those cruel Normans at first, but 
now I like them very much, they were such fine fellows. 

Mrs. M. They were indeed a very extraordinary people, 
and greatly superior to most of their contemporaries. RoUo, 
especially, was, as you say, a, fine felloio ; and one of the finest 
parts of his conduct was his keeping his promise so honorably 
to the king of France, and giving up all his predatory habits, 
after he obtained the grant of Normandy. He also estab- 
lished schools, and adopted many of the French laws and 
customs, in preference to those of his own country. In con- 
sequence of his taking these and similar measures, the Nor- 
mans, iu the course of one or two generations, became in 
manners, customs, and language assimilated to the rest of 
France ; which seems the more extraordinary, since the 
Bretons, their near neighbors, were then, and continue to 
this day, a very distinct people. 

Mary. Can you tell us, dear mamma, any more stories 
about those Noiraans ? 

Mrs. M. I can tell you one, which is not very much to 
their credit. When Rollo was required to do homage to 
Charles the Simple for his fief of Normandy, he positively 
r€ fused to comply with one of the ceremonies, which was that 
ol kissing the king's foot ; and on being told that it was abso- 
li tely indispensable, he still declared that he would only per- 
R rm it by proxy. Accordingly, he deputed one of his soldiers 
tc go through that ceremony for him. This man, on going 
u ) to the king, who was seated on his throne, snatched hold 
ol his foot, and, either through awkwardness or insolence, 
raised it to his lips with such a sudden jerk, that the poor 
kiag was thrown off his balance, and fell backward. The 
Normans uttered loud shouts of laughter, and the king, terri- 
fied, by the bolster jus expressions of their mirth, was glad to 
re.nstate himself on his throne without taking any notice of 
thj afiront ; and his courtiers were also fain to pass it ofl' m 
'.n agreeable pleasantly. 



GC THE CARLO VINGIAN RACE. [Chap. V 

(jreorge. What a set of cowards I — When the emperoi 
Otho II. challenged the king of France to single comhat, iJ 
was somewhat lilte fighting a duel. 

Mrs. M. Duels may he considered as a remnant of har- 
barism, and I hope, and almost trust, that the world may 
one day become wise enough, and Christian enough, to rid 
itself of them altogether. I am told that there are some traces 
of duels among the Greeks and Romans ; but the first we 
hear of them in modem history is of their having been prac- 
ticed in the court of Gondebaud, king of Burgmidy, the con- 
temporary of Clovis. Some antiquaries say that they were 
an invention of the Franks. At all events, they accorded 
with the passionate temper of that restless people. In the 
reign of Louis XV. the rage for dueling became, with some 
persons, almost as innocent as it was ridiculous. Challenges 
Avere given for the most trifling affronts ; but it was often 
thought quite enough for the two antagonists to clash their 
swords together, without offering to wound each other. 

Mary. If people must fight duels, I think that is the best 
way. 

Mrs. M. A better way is for people to keep their tem- 
pers, and be careful never to give intentional affronts, and 
then they will be less hkely to receive them. 

Richard. It seems as if, in the old times in France, alJ 
people had nicknames. 

Mrs. M. Before the invention of family surnames, it was 
very difficult to distinguish persons who had the same Chris- 
tian name, without using some such appellatives. These 
were generally derived from some personal peculiarity, or 
particular quality, as Rainier, the long necked; William, 
the Jiaxen-head — two names that frequently occur in the 
history of this period. We have also Henry the Quarreler, 
and Conrade the Pacific. This last was a duke of Burgundy, 
and had the singular good fortune, or good sense, to preserve 
his coimtry in peace during a reign of fifty-seven years. 

Mary. What a dear old man ! How much better off 
the people of Burgundy must have been than the peonle oi 
France, with all those quarrelsome kings and nobles ! 

Mrs. M. The state of society in France underwent a very 
great change in the tenth century. Most of the principal 
towns were ruined and depopulated : those in the north by 
the Normans ; and those in the south by the Saracens of Spain, 
who were perpetually making irruptions into France. The 
nobles ii^creased in power as tiie distresses of the middle ani/ 



Cos v.] THE CAELOVINGIAN RACE 61 

lower orders increased ; and gaining strength also from tlia 
weakness of the sovereign, they Lecaine like independent mon- 
arehs in their own httle domains. Their dwelhngs: were for- 
tresses, where they lived surroimded by their vassals and 
dependents, and engaged in petty wars with their neighbors. 
The foreign trade, what little there was of it, was all carried 
on by the traveling merchants, who went from castle to castle 
retailing their goods. 

George. Like our peddlers, I suppose. 

M.r%. M. But with this difference, that our peddlers bring 
about with them only inferior and trifling articles, while tlie 
itinerant merchants of whom I am speaking dealt in precious 
stones, silks, ornaments of gold, and spices ; and, in short, in 
whatever was then esteemed rare and costly. There were no 
shops, but each noble had his own shoemaker, carpenter, and 
blacksmith, &c., who not only supplied him with whatever he 
wanted, but also worked at their trades for his advantage and 
profit. These.persons usually dwelt in villages close to their 
lord's castle, and when any enemy approached to besiege the 
castle, they all took refuge within the walls. 

George. What fine driving of sheep and cattle, and hurry- 
skurrying, there must have been then I 

J\Irs. M. And woe betide those who could not reach tha 
gate in time ! However, on the whole, there was not so much 
harm done as might have been expected : the walls of the 
castle were too thick, and the towers too high, for the weapons 
of the assailants to do much mischief to the besieged. The 
worst they could do would be to starve them into a capitula- 
tion ; and even should that happen, the lord of the castle 
might be quits for some time on paying a good ransom. 

George. I suppose, however, the nobles always took good 
care to have plenty of provisions in their castles, so that they 
could hold out a long time ; and as to water, they always, you 
know, built their castles in places where they could have good 
wells. . 

Mrs. M. And yet the best precautions do not always suc- 
ceed. I could tell you of a castle in which there was abun- 
dance of wells, and yet the garrison were obliged to surrendej 
because they could get no water. 

George. The wells, I suppose, were dry ? 

Mrs. M. That was not the case : but you shall heai the 
whole story, although it is a little forestalling the proper ordei 
of our history. There exist still in Normandy the ruinoua 
fragments of a castle wliich was built by our Richard I., tc 



52 



THE CARLOVINGIAN RACE. 



[ChAP. T 



lefend his territories against the attacks of Philip Augustus, 
sing of France. The castle stood on a rock overhanging the 
Seine, and was considered impregnahle. The walls were in 
some places above sixteen feet thick, and it was large enough 
to contain several thousand persons. The whole was amply 
Bupphed with water, and with every thing that could contri- 
bute, to the use and security of the mhabitants. This castla 
was so fine a structure, and stood so majestically overlooking 
the adjacent country, that E-ichard, in the pride of his heart, 
called it Chateau Gaillard,* and it was considered the bulwark 
of Normandy. 

Richard. Ah, mamma, I saw the other day, in some 
travels in Normandy, a picture of the ruins of a Chateau 
GaUlard. Could they be the same ? 




Chateau Gaillard. 

Mrs. M. They were indeed ; and those desolate ruina are 
all that remains of what was once distinguished as " the beau- 
dful castle on the rock." But to go on with my story. In 
ihe conquest of Normandy by Philip Augustus, during the 
reign of our pusillanimous king John, Chateau Gaillard fell 
mto the hands of the French. With them it remained till 
the invasion of France by our Henry V., who laid siege to 
this castle. After a blockade of sixteen months, the garrison 
found themselves obliged to surrender, because all the ropes of 
their wells were worn out, and they could get no more water. 

George. If it had not been our king who took the castle, 
I should have said it was very provoking. But how came it 
to be such a ruin as it now seems to be ? 

Jfrs. M. After the English lost all their possessions in 
France, Chateau GaiUard reverted to the kings of France, 
who used it occasionally as a roya' residence, and more fre 
* The castle of joy. 



Loftv.j -THE CARLOVINGIAN RACIC. fiS 

quently as a state prison. In the sixteenth century it wa« 
altogether abandoned, and then the people of the neighboring 
districts, fearing it might be made a harbor for robbers, ob 
tained permission to demoUsh it. 

Richard. Now you have done with all these stupid Me- 
rovingian and Carlovingian kings, and their tiresome dividing 
and changing of kingdoms, will you be so kind as to give ua 
only one reign in a chapter ? for I think I shall be able to 
remember the kings much better if they come separately, than 
I can when half a dozen of them are crowded together. You 
know you did so in your history of England, when you got 
past the Saxon kings. 

Mrs. M. I am very ready to oblige you, although it will 
occasion some of my chapters to be very short ones. 

George. Never mind that, mamma ; when you give us a 
short chapter, we shall then, you know, have the more time 
for talking afterward. 

Mary. I shall be glad of that ; for, somehow or other, I 
tmnk our conversations are the pleasantest part. 

Mrs. M. To enable you the better to remember the Car- 
lovingian kings, I will give you a table of the descendants of 
Charlemagne. 

Louis Debonnaire, son of Cliarlemagne, emperor and king of France, left 
four sons. 

Sons of Louis Debonnaire. 
Lothaire, emperor, died 855. 
Pepin, king of Aquitaine, died 838. 
Louis, king of Germany, died 876. 
Cliarles the Bald, king of France, and afterward emperor, died 877. 

Sons of Lothaire. 
Louis the Young, emperor, died 875. ^ 

Lothaire, died 868. > All died without male lieira. 

Charles, died 868. > 

Pepin, king of Aquitaine, sorj o/" PepjK, was deposed in 852, and died, leaving 
no children. 

Sons of Louis the German. 
Carloman, died 880, leaving an illegitimate son, afterward emperor. 
Louis, died 882, ) leaving no chil 

Charles the Fat, emperor and kinn; cf France, died 888, J dren. 

Amulf, emperor, illegitimate son of Carloman, died in 899, and left one ioo 
Louis, emperor, who died 911, leaving no male heirs. 

Son of Charles the Bald. 
Louis II.j sumaraed the Stammerer, died 878. 

Sons of Louis the Stammebbu. 



Charlei* the Simple, died 929 



64 



HUGH CAPET 



LChap. VI 



Son of Charles the Simple 
Louis IV., the Sti-anger, died 954. 

Sons of Louis the Stranger. 
Lothaire, king of France, died 986. 
Charles, duke of Lorraine. 

Louis v., the Sluggard, son of Lothaire, died in 987, and iu him ended th* 
Carlovingian race. 



CHAPTER VI. 

HUGH CAPET. 
[Years after Christ 987-996.J 




NoRMAM Ships. 

Hugh Capet owed his elevation to the throne more to th«! 
peculiar circumstances of the times than to any extraordinary 
merits of his own. He was not a man of great abilities, not 
of any superiority of character. He seems, however, to have 
been what is vulgarly called long-headed ; an epithet which,- 
if I rightly understand it, denotes a medium quality between 
prudence and cunning. 

A few days after the death of the late king, Hugh sum- 
moned an assembly of nobles at Noyon,* chiefly consisting of 
his own vassals and partisans. By them he was formally 
elected king, and he was soon afterward consecrated at Rheims. 
During the ceremony, the archbishop would have placed the 
^•j'own upon his head, but Hugh prevented him, because \i 

* Njrtheast of Paris, a little northwest of Soissons. 



«..D. 938.] HUGH CAPET. 65 

had been foretold to him that the crown of France should re- 
main in his family for sevfin generations ; and he thought that 
if he was not actually crowned, it would prolong the royal 
dignity in his family to yet another generation. Some his- 
torians suspect that the real cause of his reluctance to weai 
the crown arose from his consciousness that he had no right t« 
it. If it were so, I own it appears to me a very extraordinary 
scruple in a man who made no hesitation in usurping every 
other kingly privilege. 

Charles, duke of Lorraine, who was now the only survivoi 
of the Carlovingian family, was not, as I have already said, 
a favorite .with the people of France ; and his having accept- 
ed of the duchy of Lorraine, and done homage for it to the 
emperor of Germany, gave them a pretext for setting aside 
his claims. He, however, determined to assert his right , 
but not having the means of doing this by force of arms, he 
had recourse to artifice. Indeed, the affairs of this period 
seem to have been carried on almost entirely by fraud and 
treachery. 

Charles had a half-nephew, Arnolf, the illegitimate son of 
his brother Lothaire. This man was a priest at Laon, and 
contrived to admit his uncle secretly into the town. Charles 
immediately took possession of the palace which had been the 
residence of the latter Carlovingian monarchs, and was pro- 
claimed king by a few of the old friends and retainers of hi? 
family. He made Ancelin, bishop of Laon, his chief coun- 
selor ; and he, being a very artful man, undertook the office, 
in the hope that it would give him the opportunity of betray- 
ing Charles into the hands of his enemies. 

In the mean time, Hugh, instead of seeking to dispossess 
his rival by open force, sought to oppose him with his own 
weapons; — fraud and falsehood. He attempted to detach Ar- 
nolf from Charles's interest, by bestowing on him the arch- 
bishopric of Rheims. Arnolf accepted of the benefice with 
many promises of fidelity to Hugh ; but he was no sooner 
settled in his archbishopric than he received Charles into the 
city, at the same time pretending that he came without hia 
consent ; and Charles, to favor the deception, affected to seize 
on the new archbishop, and carried him off a pretended pris- 
oner to Laon.* Hugh, however, was not to be easily deceived, 
and resolved, if Arnolf should ever fall into his hands, to bo 
fully revenged on him. 

In the summer of 988, Hugh laid siege to Laon, but at 
* A little nortlieast of Soissons. 



66 HUGH CAPET Ghap. VI 

the end of some weeks he was driven off by Charles, who 
made an unexpected sally, burned his camp, and compelled 
him to an ignominious flight. Hugh, fearful lest this dis- 
grace should have a bad eflect on his affairs, ordered Gerbert, 
his secretary, to write as favorable an account of it as he 
could to the bishop of Treves. I will give you an extract 
from this letter, to show you that the very useless, because 
always unavailing, art of putting a false coloring on disagree- 
able facts is not an invention of modern times : — " Do not 
believe too easily the reports you hear. By the grace of God, 
and by the aid of your prayers, we are still, as before, masters 
of the bishopric. And of all the rumor which you may hear 
this only is true : — that the king's soldiers being after mid- 
day overpowered by wine and sleep, the inhabitants of the 
town made a sally, which our people repulsed ; but during 
this time the camp was set on fire by a set of ragamuffins, 
and all the preparations for the siege destroyed. The damage 
will, however, be repaired before the 25th of August." 

Hugh did not, however, again attempt to besiege Laon : 
and Charles, believing himself to be in perfect security, gave 
himself up to ease and enjoyment. This was the time that 
his perfidious favorite, Ancelin, had so long been watching 
for ; and every thing being prepared, he received Hugh into 
the town of Laon in the dead of the night. Charles and his 
queen were taken prisoners in their beds, and were imme- 
diately hurried off to Hugh's strong tower at Orleans ; and 
you may be sure that Arnolf was not left behind. The 
wife of Charles died very soon afterward in childbed, leavmg 
two poor little twins. How long these little prisoners re- 
«nained in confinement I do not know, nor whether the best 
days of their childhood and youth were passed in that melan- 
choly tower. We find them twenty years afterward under 
the protection of the emperor of Germany. Besides these 
sons, Charles had two daughters, who, having been left in 
Germany, escaped sharing in their father's imprisonment. 
A descendant of one of these daughters married, in 1180, 
Philip Augustus, king of France, and it is through her that 
the present royal family of France claims a descent from 
Charlemagne. 

Charles of Lorraine died at Orleans in 992, and Hugh 
now hoped that he should have undisturbed possession of the 
kingdom. But, although he had nothing more to apprehend 
from the Carlovingian family, yet the restlessness and ambi- 
won of the ncbles prevented him from enjoying tranquiUitv 



\.D. 996 1 HUGH OAPET. 6» 

There were at this time eight powerful principalities ot 
states, all independent of the crown : these Avere Burgundy, 
Aquitaine, Normandy, Gascony, Flanders, Champagne, and 
Toulouse. Bretagne is not included, because, in virtue of a 
grant from Charles the Simple to E-ollo, Bretagne was con 
sidered as a dependency on the duchy of Normandy. Besides 
these greater states, innumerable smaller ones were perpetu- 
ally forming by aU those who could acquire possession of any 
territory, either by fraud or violence ; and the monarch found 
sufficient emplojrment in endeavoring to check the encroach- 
ments of these self-created nobles. One of these, on being 
asked by Hugh, "Who made him a count ?" returned for an- 
swer, " Who made you a king ?" a question to which Hugh 
could not easily reply. 

In 995, Arnolf being still a prisoner, Hugh bestowed his 
archbishopric upon his secretary Gerbert. The measure drew 
upon him the resentmeiit of the pope, who obliged him to re- 
instate Arnolf, which he did, but without restoring him to 
liberty. 

Hugh Capet died October 24th, 996, in the fifty-seventh 
year of his age, having reigned iiearly ten years. He was 
twice married, first to Adelaide, daughter of the duke of 
Aquitaine, by whom he had one son, Robert, who succeeded 
him, and three daughters. His second wife was Blanch, 
widow of king Louis V. By her he liad no children 

Hugh resided principally in Paris, Vt^hich from this tmi^ 
became the chief seat of government. 

In the same year with Hugh Capet diod Richard the I'ear- 
less, duke of Normandy : he was succeeded by his son Rich- 
ard II. 

The tenth century, which we have nww nearly brought to 
a close, has been named by some historians the iron age, as 
being the period when Europe was the most disgraced by 
murders, cruelty, immorality, and irreligion. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER VI 

Mary. Pray, mamma, why was this last king called 
Capet ? 

-MfS. Marklmm. To say the truth, you have asked me a 
difficult question, since antiquaries themselves are not agreed 
on the subject. Sortie persons suppose that he was called so 
from oxvut. a head, because, he was the head or founder of a 



68 HUGH CAPET. [Chap. Vi 

new dynasty. Others assert that the name arose Irom a cajy, 
called a capet, which he introduced. 

Richard. Can you tell me whethsr there were any d£> 
grees of rank among the French nobles of those days, oi 
whether they were all alike ? 

Mrs. M. Their ranks were very different, hut the degrees 
were regulated, not by their titles or possessions, but by the 
nearness of their dependence on the tlirone. Those who held 
fiefs of the crown, and who were the vassals of, and did 
homage to the king, were esteemed the persons of the high- 
est rank ; the next in rank were those who held fiefs of the 
king's vassals, and who did homage to them ; these also 
could parcel out their lands into other fiefs, so that these fiefs 
and sub-fiefs might be multipHed in an unlimited degree ; 
but the vassals or peers of the crown were considered to be 
of superior rank to aU the others, and enjoyed pecuHar priv- 
ileges, 

Ricliard. Then were none but the king's vassals called 
peers ? 

Mrs. M. The word^eer was derived from the Latin word 
par, or equal, and all who were vassals under the same lord 
were styled peers, not to imply that they were superior to 
others, but that they were peers or equals among themselves. 
Thus all those nobles, and they only, who held immediately 
from the crown were by pre-eminence styled peers of France. 
There was no limited number of these peers under the feudal 
system, but in the course of time the number was confined 
to twelve ; six of v/hom were laymen, and the other six ee 
clesiastics. Perhaps it may be useful to you to know their 
names. The six lay peers were the dukes of Burgundy, 
Normandy, and Aquitaine ; the counts of Flanders, Cham- 
pagne, and Toulouse. The six ecclesiastical peers were the 
archbishop of Rheims, the bishops of Laon, Langres, Chalons, 
Noyon, and Beauvais. 

George. Was the doing homage a very disagreeable cere 
mony ? 

Mrs. M. That depended very much upon circumstances. 
When a man did homage to his father, or to a friend, the 
ceremony had in it nothing disagreeable. The form was this . 
the vassal took off his cap, belt, and spurs, and kneelmg down 
before his lord, placed liis two hands within his, and swore to 
ase his hands, his fortune, and his life, in his service. The 
lord on his side swore not to obUge his vassal to fight agains^, 
the king or the church, or indeed to continue, under any cif 



O.iNv.l flUeri CAFBT. h<i 

cumstances, m arms more than forty days at a tirne. Thetc 
were several other regulations for the protection of the vassal, 
and the engagement was further ratified by religious ceremo- 
nies. On bestowing a fief, the lord either conducted his new 
vassal to the land with which he invested him, or else he pre- 
sented him with some symbol or pledge, as a security for his 
undisturbed possession. 

George. It was a fine thing to have no title-deeds, nor 
lawyers with their long parchments, such as papa had to pay 
for when he bought the new field, and which I heard hirn saj 
cost nearly a quarter as much as the field itself. 

Mrs. M. And yet I can not help thinking that your papa 
would rather purchase the field with all the expenses attend- 
ing the "long parchment'" than have it on the conditions 
formerly required from a vassal to his chief For, in that 
case, should his hege lord go to the wars, he must go too. If 
the hege lord should lose his horse in the battle, he must dis- 
mount and give him his own. He must protect his person 
when in danger. If he should be taken prisoner, he must 
surrender himself as an hostage for him : he must keep all 
his secrets, and reveal to him all the machinations of his ene- 
mies; and, in fine, he would be called upon to defend, not 
only his lord's honor, but the honor of every member of his 
family. 

Richard. Truly, if the vassals were obliged to do all tliis, 
they bought their lands dear enough. 

Mrs. M. Yet, viewed in another light, these duties of vas- 
salage were much less oppressive. The yoimger brothers of 
most noble families were vassals to their father or elder broth- 
er, and to these persons, at least, the ties of duty and kindred 
lightened the weight of the feudal obhgation. 

George. Why, to be sure, all that was nothing more than 
any body would do for his own father or brother. 

Mrs. M. One of the most singular parts of the old feudal 
system was, that the same persons could mutually pay and 
receive homage. For instance, a duke might receive the 
homage of a count for his county, and at the same time he 
might do homage to the same count for a viscounty or fief 
ef that same county. Even the king, notwithstanding that 
he was the liege lord or suzerain over the whole kingdom, yet 
was himself a vassal to the abbe of Saint Denis, of whom he 
held in fief a small territory called the Vexin. 

Richard. Do yo\i think, mamma, that the feudal system 
was a good thing ? 



JO HUGH CAPET lOu \p VI 

Mrs. M. At first, I have no doubt, it was an advantageous 
compact for both hege and vassal ; but at last it gave birth 
to the most horrible abuses. The nobles became a community 
of little tyrants, and the country was covered by their castlea 
and fortresses ; and there are instances of persons whose means 
did not enable them to build any thing better, who yet erected 
single towers, which perhaps they could only garrison with 
three or four men, but in which they could shut themselves 
up, and wage war against the weak and defenseless. 

Mary. And did all this go on till the time of the Frencn 
Ueyolution, when I have heard that all the nobles were guil- 
lotined ? 

Mrs. M. The power of the nobles began to be shaken in 
the reign of Philip Augustus, who paved the way by which 
the monarchs who succeeded him attained at last to absolute 
power. Some of the worst features, however, of the feudal 
system lasted much longer. In Besan9on* and in Franche- 
Comte, and perhaps in other places, there were to be found 
peasants whose ancestors had never obtained their manumis- 
sion, and who had no power to leave their lord's territories 
without his consent. 

Riclmi'd. What an artful man Hugh had for his secreta- 
ry I One would have supposed, from his manner of describing 
it, that the defeat of Laon was a mere trifle. 

Mrs. M. Gerbert, the secretary, was a very extraordinary 
man. It is therefore the more to be lamented that he lived 
in the coiirt of such a king, and was entangled iir his artifices, 
Gerbert was a man of obscure birth, but by his wonderful 
talents and acquirements he was, to use the words of Sismondi, 
" hke a meteor illuminating a dark sky." When a boy, he 
had been taken out of charity into the convent of Auriliac, 
and devoted himself with such ardor to study that he soon 
obtained the notice of his superiors. He appfied himself chiefly 
to the study of the classic authors of antiquity, and with a 
success unequaled by any other vsrriter of that period. The 
superior of his convent gave him permission to travel into 
Spain, that he might there gain some knowledge of the ab- 
struse sciences as then taught by the learned Arabians in th« 
university of Cordova. Here he made such good use of his 
time and opportunities, that his fame spread over all Europe. 
On his return to Fram?e his wonderful acquirements, and, 
above all, his ability to read and write the Arabic characteis, 
gained him the reputation of being a wizard. Both Charles 
* TJie 5 is pronounced soft like s. 



Con v.] HUGH CAPET 71 

of Lorraine and Hugh Capet employed him at differvrnt times 
as their secretary, and Hugh wished to have made him arch- 
bishop of Rheims : but this wish was frustrated, and Ger- 
bert, on being disappointed of that benefice, abandoned France 
in disgust, and entered into the service of the emperor Otho 
HI., who loaded him with honors. Finally, this Gerbert, 
the poor monk of Aurillac, ended his career as pope Sylves- 
ter II. 

Mary. Although Hugh Capet's was but a short reigU) 
you have found, I think, a good many things to tell us relating 
to it. 

Mrs. M. And yet I perceive, after all, that I have omitted 
a very remarkable circumstance, which is this : — Toward the 
latter end of the tenth century, France was visited by a dread- 
ful plague. The mortality occasioned by this disorder wa.s 
very great, particularly in the provinces of Perigord and Li 
mousin. The nobles of these provinces were noted, even in 
that quarrelsome age, for their perpetual wars and discords ; 
but now, in consequence of this plague, which their own con 
sciences made them regard as an especial visitation of God' a 
anger, they entered into a league among themselves, and took 
a solemn oath to live for the future in peace with each other. 
The example of these nobles was in great part followed in 
some of the other provinces, and many cf the nobles entered 
into a solemn engagement, if not to live wholly at peace, at 
least to abstain from fighting on certain specified days of thv* 
week. 



CHAPTER VTI. 
bobeht. surnamed the pious. 

[Years after Christ, 996-103]. J 




The French historians find themselves exceedingly puzzled 
to make out a clear account of the reign of Robert. The 
difficulty partly arises from the want of a regular record of 
events during a period of some years, which causes a serious 
chasm in the history, and partly from contradictions and con- 
fusion of dates in the scanty materials which are left relating 
to the other part of the reign. I will, however, make out the 
naxTative as well as I can. 

Robert, the only son of Hugh Capet, was in the twenty- 
sixth year of his age when his father died. He had been 
previously crovra.ed, as a means' of securing to him the succes- 
sion of the throne, which he now ascended without any oppo- 
sition. He was, we are told, very handsome, with a finely 
formed person ; his whole deportment was mild and serene, 
but more expressive of gravity than of dignity. His under- 
atanding was not absolutely defective, but he had no enlarge- 
ment of mind ; and with an earnest desire to do right, he was 
continually committing the greatest absurdities. Indeed the 
character of Robert was a strange mixture of goodness and 
folly, and notwithstanding the amiableness of his disposition, 
he made a very indifferent king. His very virtues became 
useless by being carried to a pernicious exc^^ss. His charity, 



J I). 995. J ROBERT THE PIOUS. 7« 

instead of relieving poverty, was an encouragement to idleness ; 
his lenity was a sanction to vice, and his religion was confined 
to the mere performance of outward forms and ceremonies, 
which ocsupied his whole time and attention, to the uUer 
neglect of the government of his kingdom. 

About the year 995 Robert married Bertha, widow of 
Eudes count of Chartres, and daughter of Conrad the Pacific. 
Robert had been froia his youth much attached to Bertha, 
and for a short time the young couple lived very happily. 

You know, I believe, that the canons of the Romish church, 
which were at that tirne veiy strictly enforced, forbid marriage 
even between very distant relations. Unfortunately, Robert 
and Bertha were cousins in the fourth degree, and the pope, 
Gregory V., sent them an order to separate immediately, 
under pain of excommunication. Finding that Robert re- 
fused to obey, he laid the whole kingdom under an interdict. 

Some writers have given us a horrible account of the suffer- 
ings which the king and queen underwent in consequence of 
this sentence. They tell us that, abandoned by all their at- 
tendants, they were left in the solitude of their palace, with 
no one to perform any menial offices for them, until two poor 
slaves, who were bold enough to defy the pope's anathema, 
offered their services to attend on a deserted king and queen, 
whom every one else deemed it pollution to approach. But 
these stories are supposed to have been invented by the monks 
in after times, in order to alarm the emperor Henry IV., when 
he ventured to treat with contempt the papal anathema. If 
so, we may class them with the fables sometimes told by silly 
lurses to frighten naughty children. 

Robert was importuned on all sides to yield obedience to 
he pope ; but still he and Bertha, who were sincerely at ■ 
Cached to each other, would not consent to a separation. The 
monks at last obtained that by artifice which they could not 
gain by persuasion. Bertha having given birth to a dead 
child, the monks made Robert believe that God had signified 
nis disapprobation of the marriage by causing the queen to 
bring forth a monster, which had, as they pretended, no re- 
semblance to the human form. Upon this Robert consented 
to a divorce, and poor Bertha retired into a convent and be- 
came a nun. 

About 1002 Robert married a second wife, Constance of 
Provence, a princess of a proud and insolent character, and 
whose habits were totally different from his own. She de- 
flghtod in show and amusem,ents, and lov«d to be always 

D 



'* ROBERT THE FIV)US. [Chap. VII 

surrounded by minstrels and troubadours, and filled h<!r court 
ivith the young nobles of Provence, whose dress and lively 
manners were shocking in the eyes of the king and his grave 
courtiers. 

Jiobert spent his time chiefly with monks, in assisting thenj 
in the services of the church, and in pious pilgrimages to the 
shrines of saints and martyrs. He was constantly accom- 
panied by a train of heggars ; he filled his palace with them,, 
and, in imitation of our Saviour's humility, would frequently 
wash their feet and dress their sores. 

While Robert was thus in a manner secluded in the circle 
of monks and heggars which he drew around him, and ap- 
peared totally hlind to every thing that was going on else- 
where, Europe was thrown into a ferment by the repeated 
accounts which arrived from Palestine of the ill treatment 
which the pilgrims to the Holy Land met with from the 
Saracens, who even threatened to destroy the holy sepulcher. 

The tide of fury which this intelligence excited turned in 
the first instance against the Jews, who were accused of 
carrying on a secret correspondence with the infidels by 
means of letters, which, it was pretended, were conveyed in 
the hollow of a staff. In consequence of this vague sus- 
picion, the Jews underwent a terrible persecution ; but I be- 
lie-TO nothing was done toward the relief of the Christians at 
Jerusalem, notwithstanding that a crusade against the Sara- 
cens was preached by Sylvester II., who was so much ani- 
mated by liis subject, that, although he was then in extreme 
old age, he astonished his hearers by his eloquence and energy 

In 1002 Henry duke of Burgmidy, brother to Hugh Capet, 
died. He left no children of his own ; but having married a 
widow, his wife's son by her first husband took possession of 
the duchy. This man, whose name was Otho Wilham, was 
opposed by Robert, who claimed the duchy as his uncle's 
heir. Robert, being no warrior, called in the aid of his vassal 
the duke of Normandy. They together mustered a consider- 
able army, and set out to punish the usurper. AU went on 
well till they reached Auxerre,* to which town they laid 
siege. Near the town stood an abbey, dedicated to Saint 
Germain, which was garrisoned by the enemy. Robert waii 
ordering an assault to be made upon it, when he was warned 
by a priest not to incur the anger of the saint by presuming 
to attack his cloister. While the priest was speaking, a thici 

* In l.iie iioitbern part of Burgundy, or Bourgoyne, some distance soatb 
east of Paris. 



A D. 1003. J KOBERT IHK PIOUS. 7* 

Tiiist rose up from the neighboring river, which 1 need not tell 
you is a very common occurrence ; but the royal army chose 
to regard it as something supernatural. The soldiers called 
out that it was Saint Germain himself, who was coming to 
protect the abbey with his buclder : they then took to flight, 
with the king at their head, and thus ended Robert's first 
campaign. In the following year he commenced another 
with nearly the same success. After that he seems to have 
relinquished his designs on Burgundy. Otho William, after 
the Isipse of eleven years, finding himself beset by many 
'juemies, offered to resign his dukedom to the king, an offer 
which Robert accepted, and bestowed the title of duke upon 
his eldest son. Otho obtained for himself the more humble 
title of count of Burgundy ; but with it he contrived to retain 
all the power and solid advantages which he had before pos- 
sessed. 

Robert had four sons. The eldest, who had been crowned 
when a child (as was then the custom), died in 1025. The 
next son was an idiot, and Robert wished to crown Henry, 
his third son ; but Constance, who loved none of her children 
excepting Robert, the youngest, was desirous that her favorite 
son should succeed to the dignities of his eldest brother. This 
the king, however, firmly opposed, and in spite of the queen's 
violence and opposition, he had Henry crovsTied accordingly. 

In 1031, as Robert was returning from a pilgrimage to 
some of the principal sanctuaries in France, he was attacked 
at Melun* by a fever, which shortly after terminated his life, 
in the sixtieth year of his age and thirty-fourth of his reign. 

He married, first, Bertha of Burgundy, and secondly. 
Constance of Provence, by whom he had four sons and two 
daughters. 

(1.) Hugh died before his father. (2.) Eudes, the idiot. 
(3.) Henry, who succeeded to the throne. (4.) Robert, duke 
of Burgundy. 

(1.) Adela, married Richard III., duke of Normandy 

(2.) Adelaide, married Baldwin IV., earl of Flanders. 

In 1027, Richard II., duke of Normandy, died. He left 
four sons : Richard III., his successor ; Robert ; Mauger, 
archbishop of Rouen ; and Henry, who was ■ illegitimate. 
Richard and Robert soon quarreled, and Richard besieged 
Robert in the castle of Falaise. At last Robert pretended 
to desire a reconciliation with his brother, and, opening the 
gates of the town, invited him and his nobles to a bancjuet 
* On the Seine, south of Paris. 



rs ROBERT THE PIOUS. [Chap VU 

The two brothers now appeared quite reconciled ; hut verj 
Boon -afterward R-ichard, with all those who had partaken 
of the banquet, died. K-obert was accused of having poisoned 
them, and was in consequence excommunicated by Mauger. 
Robert did not attempt any vmdication ; he, however, got 
the sentence of excommunication removed, and succeeded hia 
deceased brother as duke of Normandy. 

He was a man of strong bodily and mental powers, and not- 
withstanding the dreadful suspicion under which he labored, 
he was much looked up to by the princes of his time, and 8-c- 
quired the surname of " the Magnificent." He was uncle to 
Edward the Confessor, the greatest part of whose youth was 
Fpent in the Norman court. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER VII. 

George. I think this same king Robert was the most 
comical king I ever heard of. 

Mrs. Markham. With all his folly he had so much good 
ness and simplicity of character, that I can not find in my 
heart to join in the excessive ridicule wlaich some of the 
modem French historians attach to his name ; nor can I, at 
the same time, consider him as having been almost a saint, 
which is what some of the old writers seem to do. He was 
doubtless much fitter for a cloister than for a throne ; but ho 
had no right to abandon the duties of a king in order to prae 
tice those of a priest. 

Mary. I suppose, mamma, you do not mean that there ia 
any harm in doing the duties of a priest ? 

Mrs. M. No, my dear; I only mean that no one has a 
right to neglect those duties which belong expressly to his 
own station. Robert carried his charity to so great an ex- 
cess, that he had generally three hundred beggars living in 
his palace. 

George. He should have built an alms-house for them ; 
he would have found it much more comfortable. 

Mrs. M. Indeed I should have thought so, and so doubt 
less would queen Constance ; for she, it seems, did not like 
to be always surrounded by these lazy, dirty people ; and 
Robert was often obliged to have recourse to strange con- 
trivances to conceal them from her. One day, at dinner, he 
had one of his beggars hid under the table, and from time to 
tim3 he popped a bit of meat from his own plate to the beggar. 
When dninei "was over, the beggar was gone, and so also were 



CoNf.] ROBERT THE FIOUS. 7 

the gold ornaments from the bottom of tha king's mantle, 
which the beggar had contrived to purloin. Another time^ 
while the king was at mass, he perceived a man busily 
employed in stripping the gold fringe from the bottom of his 
robe ; Robert, without moving from his kneeling posture, 
mildly said to him, " Do not take away any more, but leave 
the rest for some one whose necessities may be as great as 
thine." 

Richard. I think this Robert was not only king of beg- 
gars, but king of thieves. 

Mrs. M. It should seem, that he not only sanctioned 
thieves, but that he also taught them how to steal. The 
queen, who loved show and finery, had presented the king 
with a splendid lance, wliich was decorated with rich silver 
ornaments. As the king was one morning going to church, 
and carrying this fine lance in liis hand, he perceived a rag- 
ged-looking man, and beckoning to him to come to him, be 
ordered him to go and procure some carpenters' tools. When 
the man returned with them, Robert took liim into some snug 
place where he thought they should not be found out ; and 
there they both set to work to strip the lance of its silver or- 
naments, wliich Robert put into the beggar's wallet, telling 
him to be gone with all speed, lest the queen should see him. 
When Constance saw her lance deprived of its beauty, she 
flew into a violent passion. 

Mary. Robert was so provoking that I reaUy think the 
queen was quite right to be in a passion with him. 

Mrs. M. I allow that Robert was very provoking ; but 
still 1 ^an not think that Constance was quite right to be in 
a passion. Mutual kmdness and mutual forbearance is the 
bond of union and of happiness in every relation of life. 

Geo?-ge. Pray, mamma, can you recollect any more stories 
about this droll king ? 

Mrs. M. He was, as I have told you, very fond of sing- 
ing, and he composed a great deal of church music. He 
once went a pilgrimage to Rome, to visit the tombs of Saint 
Peter and Saint Paul. While in the church, he placed, with 
much solemnity and parade, a sealed packet on the altar. As 
' soon as he was gone, the monks hastened to open it, expecting 
it to contain some splendid offering, and were very greatly 
disappointed to find that it contained nothing but some of the 
king's music. 

Robert was once desired by Constance to compose a song 
in her praise, and sing it to her. The king did not iecl him 



n ROBERT THE PIOUS. IOhai-. VJI. 

self disposed to comply with this request, but he sang a 
hymn, which began, " O Constantia MarUjrum f and the 
queen, who luckily did not understand Latin, distinguishing 
her own name, Constantia, supposed herself to be listening to 
a flattering song written in praise of her own beauty and wit, 

Wary. Do you know, mamma, what sort of dresses those 
were which the queen's young favorites wore, and which the 
king and the monks did not like ? 

Mrs. M. I only know what Glaber, an old French his- 
torian, says of them. Here is the passage : — " France, be- 
cause of queen Constance, became the resort of the natives 
of Aquitaine and of Auvergne, the most vain and the most 
frivolous of men. Their manners and their dress were dis- 
orderly ; the arms and the equipment of their horses were 
equally strange. On the middle part of their heads they had 
no hair, and their beards were shaven like Merry- Andrews. 
Their leggings and their buskins were shamefully fashioned. 
In short, they respected neither faith nor the promises of 
peace. But, O grief I these shameful examples were almost 
immediately followed by the whole race of Frenchmen, for 
merly so seemingly in their manners." 

Richard. How stupid it was in the old historians to make 
BO many blunders in their histories I 

Mrs. M. It is not always easy to discover truth even in 
these days, when there is every faciUty for the acquisition of 
knowledge. And if we see, as we so often do, facts mis- 
represented, and false reports circulated, we must not be sur- 
prised if we find that a true statement of facts was still more 
difficult to be obtained at a time when private letters and 
ahance travelers were the only means by which news could 
be transmitted from one place to another. There is also an- 
other and a very singular cause for the chasm in history, 
which we have to complain of during one part, at least, of 
the reign of Robert. It was generally beheved by the Chris- 
tian part of mankind, that the world was to last only a thou- 
sand years after the commencement of the Christian era. As 
therefore the fatal year 1000 drew near, a general gloom and 
dread prevailed. The minds of the more serious and pioua 
persons were filled with the necessity of performing acts of 
devotion ; they founded churches and religious houses ; and 
those who had usui-ped any of the possessions of the church 
were anxious to restore them. The gay and thoughtless, 
deemmg that th3 world would last but a short time longer, 
determined to enjoy what they called its pleasures Tvhile the\ 



CJoNV.'i ROBERT THE PIOUS. 7i. 

(jould, and plunged into every kind of vice. The nearer the 
dreaded year approached, the more calamitous was the e fleet 
of this general apprehension. The lands were no longer cul- 
tivated, all useful labor ceased, and the people thought only 
of the passing moment. And, above all, it apj)eared useless 
to record the events of a world that was so soon to end, and 
we have consequently no knowledge of this period, excepting 
that v/hich can be obtained from private letters, more parti- 
cularly from those of Gerbert. 

George. But as the world was not destroyed in 1000, 
what did the people do for bread the following year ? 

Mrs. M. There must inevitably have been a famine, if it 
had not been for a most fortunate controversy, something like 
another which I remember to have taken place about the 
termination of the eighteenth century. The people could 
not agree whether the thousand years were to be completed 
in the year 1000 or in 1001. Those who inclined to the lat- 
ter opinion cultivated thsir land yet one more year, and those 
who had looked for the destruction of the world in 1000, find- 
ing the year pass away, and no appearance of the catastrophe 
they had expected, took courage, and returned again to the 
labors of agriculture ; and thus the horrors of famine were 
for this time averted. 

Ricliard. You say, mamma, it was averted for tids time, 
as if the famine came at last. 

Mrs. M. It did, indeed, come at last, and in all its worst 
horrors, in consequence of an excessively rainy season, which 
prevented the corn from ripening. We are told that the 
distress for food was so great, that the bodies of the dead 
were no sooner committed to the grave than they were torn 
up and devoured by the famished people. Travelers were 
murdered, and children decoyed from, their parents, and slain 
for food. A butcher of Tournay was condemned to be burned 
lor exposing human flesh for sale in his shop. 

George. Do you know, mamma, in what _^ear this great 
famine took place ? 

Mrs. M. That is a point on which the French antiquaries 
are divided : some historians place it in the reign of Robert, 
and others in that of his son. In one thing, however, they 
are agreed, which is this, that the harvest which followed 
after this year of scarcity was the most abundant that had 
ever been known ; a proof, if proof were wanting, of God' a 
kindness to his creatures in thus tempering his chr-^'liseinenta 
with mernies. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

HENRY L 
(fears after Christ, 1033—1060.1 




Knight arrayed for a Tournambut 

HenrY; who was a very insignificant character, was aboai 
twenty years old when his father died. His mother endeavor- 
ed to excite a revolt against him, for the purpose of placing 
her youngest son on the throne. 

Henry, without attempting any defense, mounted his horse, 
and with a few young companions, rode post-haste into Nor- 
mandy, to claim the protection of the duke, Robert the Mag- 
nificent. Robert immediately marched to Paris, and obliged 
Constance and the nobles, who had joined her party, to sue 
for peace. Constance retired into a convent, and soon after- 
ward died. Henry satisfied his brother's ambition by bestow- 
ing on him Burgundy, and rewarded the serAaces Robert had 
rendered him, by annexing to Norruandy Pontoise, Gisors, and 
some other places. 



10S5.] HENRY I. b 

In 1035, Robert being oppressed with the remembrance (a 
his crimes, and especially with that of the fatal banquet at 
Falaise, determined to relieve his mind, and, as he believed, 
to wipe away his sins, by going on a pilgrimage to the Holy 
Land. Feeling assured that he should never return, he ar- 
ranged his affairs, as well as he could, before his departure. 
Ele had one only son, who was illegitimate, and his greatest 
anxiety was alx)ut this child ; he wished to make him his suc- 
cessor, but he feared that the stain attached to his birth would 
defeat his intentions. He, however, took every possible pre- 
caution to secure them. He made his nobles swear fealty to 
the child, and left him under the guardianship of Alain, duke 
of Bretagne. This boy was afterward William the Conqueror 
— so celebrated in English history. Robert died, as he had 
anticipated, in the Holy Land. When the news of his death 
reached Normandy, Mauger and his brother Henry tried to 
set aside the claims of the young William ; but these were so 
well defended by Alain, and so heartily espoused by the king, 
that the endeavors of his adversaries proved unavailing. When 
at length William became old enough to undertake the con- 
duct of his own affairs he showed those great abilities, and 
that daring yet calculating ambition, which so much distin- 
guished him in after-life. The king of France, when he saw 
the enterprising disposition of the young duke, repented of the 
part he had formerly taken in his favor, and joined vsdth 
Mauger and his other enemies. But William was now too 
strong to be shaken ; he maintained his power over Normandy, 
and increased in dignity and reputation. 

Henry I. is said to have been three times married. In 
marrying his third wife, Anne, who was daughter of the czai 
of Muscovy, he at all events kept clear of the evils which his 
father had incurred by marrying within the prohibited degrees, 
since the very name and country of Muscovy was at that time 
almost unknown in France. Anne of Russia proved a very 
quiet, harmless queen ; she endowed a convent ; and is, if I 
mistake not, enrolled in the hst of the French saints. As for 
Heniy, he became every year of his Hfe more and more con- 
temptible, and seems almost to have been overlooked and for- 
gotten by the historians of this period. He died in 1 060, leaving 
tluree sons, by Anne of Muscovy : 

(1.) Philip, who succeeded him. (2.) Robert, died youag. 
(3.) Hugh, count of Vermandois. 

During this reign some of the great nobles arrived at a de- 
gree of power which eclipsed that of the king. The counts of 

D* 



52 HENRY I. [Chap. Vlll 

Toulouse, of Flanders, and of Anjou, were among the most 
powerful. The count of Champagne and Blois, son of Bertha 
(kmg Robert's first wife), was another very distinguished no- 
bleman. In 1037 he fought a bloody battle at Bar-le-duc* 
with his cousin, the emperor Conrad, for the succession to the 
territories of their grandfather, Conrad the Pacific, whose son 
had lately died without children. The count of Champagne 
was slain ; he left two sons : the eldest inherited the earldom 
of Champagne, and the youngest succeeded to that of Blois, 
and was the ancestor of our king Stephen. 

During a long period the affairs of the Galilean church had 
been in great disorder. Many of the monks had broken their 
vows of celibacy, and had quitted their convents. The bene- 
fices of the church were sold to the highest bidder, and fre- 
guently fell into the hands of laymen. This abuse was not 
coiifined to France, it extended to Italy, where even the papal 
crc wn was put up to sale, and was at one time placed on the 
head of a boy of ten years old, who was made pope by the 
name of Benedict IX. The necessity of a reform in the eccle- 
siastical order became every day more and more apparent. 
At last, m 1048, the emperor Henry III. raised to the papal 
throne Bruno, a man of known sanctity. He took the name 
of Leo IX. Immediately after his election he came to 
Rheims and convened a council, at which aU the prelates of 
France were summoned to appear, and those who were 
proved to have been guilty of simony were deprived of their 
benefices. 

The corruptions in the church gave rise to many sects of 
heretics. Among the fancies of one of these sects was that 
of uniting the practice of frequent fasting with an entire absti- 
nence from animal food. The consequence of this spare diet 
v/as a peculiar pallid complexion, which was considered aa 
such a certain symbol of the sect, that we are told that even 
good Catholics who were so unlucky as to have pale faces 
were liable to the danger of being dragged to the stake, and 
burnt as heretics. 

In 1042, Edward, surnamed the Confessor, was recalled 
from his exile in Normandy, to take possession of the throne 
of England, then vacant by the death of Harold Harefoot, the 
son of Canute. 

* In the western part of the province of Lorraine, near tl e frontiers of, 
Cbampagno. 



"ON*.; HENRY I. 8S 

Cnpj V KRSaTION on CHAPTER VIII. 

Richard. The reign, of Henry I. is not nearly so entertain 
ing as the reign, of Robert. 

Mrs. Markliani. It is certainly barren of great or brilliant 
events, but it was nevertheless a very important period to the 
French nation ; and during the reign of this king the people, 
made more rapid strides toward improvement than they had 
ever done before. 

George. It must have bejn the people's own doing then, 
for the king did not seem endued with much spirit of improve 
inent. 

J'Jrs. M. You, George, who are so fond of talking of 
knights and of knight-errantry, will be delighted to hear that 
this improvement of the people was in a great measure owing 
to the institution of chivalry, which arose about this period. 
The spirit of chivalry is, as you know, high-minded and hon- 
orable, and it had the effect of elevating tlie national character 
of the French from the hardness and brutality of barbarism 
Though no doubt frequently carried to a romantic and absurd 
extreme, yet it gave the first impulse to that true, gentlemanly 
feeling which forms the charm and excellence of all well-brer" 
society. 

Richard. I wonder how chivalry was first thought of 

Mrs. M. Some antiquaries assert that traces of it can be 
found in the primitive customs of the Frardfs ; and that when 
their youths were first presented with manly weapons they 
were made to swear that they would use them valiantly, and 
would never disgrace their tribe ; but the more common opin 
'.on is, that the origin of chivaliy is of much later date, and 
that it arose in the beginning of the eleventh century, from 
the piety of certain nobles, who, desirous to give a religious 
tendency to the profession of arms, consecrated their swords to 
the service of God, and took a solemn oath to use them only 
in the cause of the weak and of the oppressed. And this is 
supposed to have lighted the spark of Aat chivalrous flame 
which spread like wild-fire from one end of Europe to tho 
other. 

With regard to the ceremonial part of chivalry, we hardly 
know its precise original ; but as some of the laws and regu 
lations are very singular, you may be glad to have them de 
Bcribed. When a nobleman (for only men of noble birth could 
be admitted into the order) was to be made a knight, the cere- 
mony began by placing him in a bath, as if to express that ic 



84 HENRY I. LChap. VlU 

presenting himself for knighthood, he presented himself washed 
from his sins. When he left the bath he was clothed first in 
a white tunic, then in a crimson vest, and lastly, in a sable 
coat of mail ; each of which ceremonies had its symbolical 
meaning. The white tunic signified the purity of the life 
which he was now vowing to lead ; the crimson vest, the 
blood he would be called on to shed; and the black armor 
was an emblem of death, for which he was always to be pre- 
pared. His dress was then completed by a belt, which was 
intended as the symbol of chastity, and by a pair of spurs, 
which were to denote his readiness to hasten wherever duty 
called him. Lastly his sword was girded on, and this part 
of the ceremony was accompanied by an exhortation to be 
brave and loyal. The whole then concluded by a stroke on 
the shoulder from the flat of a sword ; and this was always 
given by one who was already a knight, and was meant as a 
sort of impressive memento which should infix strongly on the 
mind of the new knight the solemn engagements he had en ■ 
tered into. 

George. The being a knight was a much more serious 
thing than I had supposed. I think those rough old barons 
must have found it rather difficult to become accomplished 
knights all at once. 

Mrs. M. When chivalry was thoroughly established, al- 
most every youth of high birth was early trained to knight- 
hood, by being domesticated in the castle of some great 
lord, where he was instructed in all the observances of chiv 
airy. 

Mary. Then were there schools and schoolmasters in 
these castles ? 

Mrs. M. The education of boys was conducted very dif- 
ferently then from what it is now. The young nobles had 
little to do with books, and instead of learning lessons, had to 
learn how to take care of their horses, and how to clean their 
arms ; and their business was to attend upon the lord of the 
castle, as if they had been his servants. 

George. I suppose they only pretended to be his servants 
just for form's sake. 

Mrs. M. I can assure you it was not at all for mere 
form's sake. These youths of quahty had to execute many 
domestic services in the families in which they resided. They 
assisted their lord when he dressed, they waited on him and 
his lady at table, they attended him when he rode out) and, 
in short, obeyed him in every thing. 



U0NT.5 HENRY I. .«* 

Mary. Tlieu did these young noblemen dinvi in the aftrv- 
ants' hall ? 

Mrs. M. Formerly there were no servants' halls. The 
whole family in a French, as in an Enghsh castle, dined to- 
gether ; a large salt-cellar was placed in the middle of the 
table, to make a division between the upper end, where the 
lord sat with his guests, and that part wliich was occupied by 
the menials. 

Mary. But what I wanted to know, mamma, was whether 
these boys were considered as servants or gentlemen ? 

Mrs. M. They did not associate with the domestics of tho 
family, but were the companions of the baron's sons ; and 
when they were not in attendance upon their lord, they used 
to spend their mornings in military sports in the castle-yard, 
and in the evening they joined in the music, dancing, and 
other amusements of the ladies of the castle. 

George. I dare say they led very pleasant Hves. 

Riclmrd. I don't think I should have liked it. It must 
have been very disagreeable to have been half servant and 
half gentleman. 

Mrs. M. We should now think it a very lounging, idle 
kind of life for a young man ; but at that time, when there 
were no schools or colleges, excepting for those who were de- 
signed for the profession of the church, there was no better 
mode of education for the young nobihty ; and as they were 
required to conduct themselves with great respect toward the 
lord and the ladies of the castle, they acquired, at all events, 
some civilization and polish. 

Richard. Did all this chivalry make any difference in the 
manners or condition of the lower classes ? 

Mrs. M. The same cause that improved the higher order? 
contributed to advance the condition of all the others. The 
spirit of chivalry, while it refined the nobles, at the same 
time introduced among them habits of expense, which gave 
a stimulus to industry. Trade was increased ; talent and in- 
vention were encouraged ; the trafSc of the country was no 
longer confined to roving peddlers ; the towns were again peo- 
pled ; the streets were filled with shops and warehouses ; and 
the merchants became rich, and were enabled to engage in 
Ibreign commerce. 

Mary. Did the nobles, then, when they became knights, 
want so many more things than they had before ? 

Mrs. M. Knighthood certainly introduced a moie costly 
style of dress, of armor, and of all sorts of equipment. In 



•36. HENRY I. [Chap. VJU 

ill these the L;iiights vied with each other, and also, in like 
manner, in the number of their attendants, and in the size 
and architecture of their castles. 

Ricliard. Then do you think, mamma, it is a good thing 
for people to be extravagant ? 

Mrs. M. Extravagance and penuriousness are both equiilly 
wrong ; the golden mean lies between the two extremes. I 
shall show you, in the next reign, what serious evils the ex- 
pensive habits of the nobles produced. But almost any thing 
is better than the brutal indolence of men unambitious either 
of excellence or of distinction ; and it is certain that even 
the vanities which came in the train of chivalry had the 
etfect of improving the condition of the towns, the inhabitants 
of which became persons of importance from their wealth, al- 
though their political condition continued to be still that of serfs 

Richard. Was there any change made in the condition 
of the farmers and country people ? 

Mrs. M. They still remained in a state of vassalage ; and 
as they were obliged to work for the benefit of their masters, 
instead of their own, they had not the means of getting rich 
like the townspeople. Still I trust the hardships of their 
condition were a little mehorated. I mentioned to you be- 
fore, that about the end of the tenth century, after a dreadful 
plague in Perigord and the Limousin, the nobles entered into 
a pacific league with each other. This league was frequently 
renewed and enforced, particularly about 1035, and afterward, 
and had the title given it of the peace of God, and of God's 
truce. It contained an especial clause for the protection of 
the lower classes, namely, that no one should molest the labor- 
ers in the fields, neither deprive them of their implements of 
husbandry, nor injure their persons. 

George. Those were shocking times m which such clauses 
could be required. I recollect, when you mentioned the 
league before, you said the nobles agreed only to fight on 
certain specified days. I wonder which were their fighting 
days, and wliich were their quiet days. 

Mrs. M. I believe I can teU you : the fighting days be- 
gan at sunrise on Monday morning, and ended at sunset on 
Wednesday evening ; after which all hostility was to cease 
till the sun rose again on the following Monday. It was also 
forbidden to fight, or make preparation for war, on any of the 
festivals of the church, and during Lent or Advent. 

George. Therq was not ther:, after all, much time left [ot 
fighting. 



Jon. » . HENRY I. o. 

m-fn M. The regulations varied in diiierent parts of 
France, according to circumstances ; but the truce was, on 
the whole, highly beneficial to the country, and reflects great 
honor on the ecclesiastics and nobles by whose praiseworthy 
exertions it was made and enforced. 

Mary. I am very glad to find there were some good 
priests in those days, and that they were not all bad. 

M?'S. M. History is not the criterion by which we ought 
to judge of the character of the clergy : there are always 
among them, as among all other descriptions of men, some 
that disgrace their profession ; and it is in general only the 
artful and ambitions who interfere in affairs of state, and who 
make their names conspicuous in history. The good and pious 
(by much, I trust, the most numerous), who confine their am- 
bition to the fulfillment of their own proper duties, are over- 
looked, and their names are unknown to posterity ; but their 
names are doubtless written in a record not perishable like 
earthly records. 

Richard. It seemed very strange that the people of 
Prance should be so ignorant of geography as scarcely to 
know that there was such a country as Muscovy. 

Mrs. M. The science of geography was very little studied 
till after the crusades. A canon of Bremen, indeed, wrote a 
geographical work as early as the year 1010 ; and he tells us 
that Sweden and Norway were two vast realms unknown tc 
the civilized world. Russia he describes as a country where 
the people had but one eye and one leg. 

George. When you were speaking of those heretics who 
were burned because they were of a pale complt /ioa, I could 
aot help thinking, mamma, what a bac chan< * 'jj-.' would 
DaTe had if you had lived in those days. 



CHAPTER IX. 

PHILIP I. 
[Years after Christ, 1060— lllH.J 




FiGDRKS TAKEN FROM MONUMENTS OF THE TWKLFTH CENTUai 

The late king appointed Baldwin, earl of Flanders, to hi 
guardian to his son Philip, who, at his accession, was oiil) 
seven years old. Baldwin died in 1067, and the young 
prince, being then fourteen, was declared old enough, accord- 
ing to the laws of France, to hold the reins of government 
without a guardian. 

It is impossible to conjecture what Philip migtt have been 
had he been brought up till manhood under the eye of a ju- 
dicious parent or preceptor ; but, as the case was, he became 
a slave to his vices. He had naturally a good disposition and 
a comely person ; but all the faculties of his mind were ab- 
sorbed and lost in sloth and sensuality, and his personal beauty 
was obhterated, almost in the prime of life, by the effects of 
excessive gluttony. 

These vices, however, did not engross him aU at once. In 
the early part of his reign he showed some degree of activity, 
by marching into Flanders to the assistance of Baldwin, hig 
late guardian's grandson, against his uncle Robert of Frize 



A.D. 109Si.J PHILIP I. 85 

land, who disputed with him the succession to the earldom 
«f Manders. 

This Robert was, according to the notions of those times, 
a brave and pohtic prince, though we should esteem him 
worse than a common robber. Having been sent forth by liis 
father with a band of adventurers to seek his fortunes, he at- 
tacked Holland, which was at that time in the possession of 
the widow of the last earl of Holland, who held it in trust 
for her young son ; and the countess found herself obliged to 
marry the invader as the only means of preserving herself 
and her children from ruin. 

Philip was unable to contend with an experienced warrior 
like Kobert, and was soon glad to make peace with him. 
One of the conditions of the peace was that he should marry 
E-obert's step-daughter. Bertha of Holland. He accordingly 
married her, but divorced her some years afterward, on the 
plea of consanguinity. In 1092 he became enamored of Ber- 
trade de Montford, the wife of Fulk, earl of Anjou, and per- 
suaded her to leave her husband and marry him. The pope 
threatened to excommunicate Philip unless he sent Bertrade 
back to her husband, and, on the king's refusal, put liis threat 
m execution. 

About the year 1090, the Turks, who had previously driven 
the Saracens from Jerusalem, began to excite great appre- 
hensions throughout almost all Europe. The emperor of 
Constantinople, in particular, Alexis Comnenus, began to treni 
ble for his safety, and in an evil hour sent a letter to pope 
Urban II., imploring assistance. There were at this time 
two popes. A great quarrel had taken place between the 
emperor of Germany and the cardinals. Each party insisted 
on the right of choosing the pope ; and Urban, in consequence 
of these dissensions, which were carried on with great bitter- 
ness, had come for protection to France. He called a council 
at Clermont in 1095, where he read the letter of the emperor 
of Constantinople, and exhorted all Christians to take up arms 
against the infidels. The minds of the peopfe had been al- 
ready roused by the representations of a monk of Picardy, well 
known by the name of Peter the Hermit, who was lately 
returned from the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and who gave 
most pathetic descriptions of the treatment which the Chris- 
tians there experienced from the Turks. All France was in 
agitation, and, while the pope was yet speaking and promising 
indulgences and absol'ation to those who should take up arms 
in defense of the holy sepulcher, the surrounding crowd, as if 



g^ PHILIIM. LChap. IX 

aeised -vrith a simultaneous enthusiasm, shouted forth " God 
wills it."* A crusade was immediately resolved upon, and the 
ery of "God wills it" became a sort of watch- word throughout 
Europe. A whole year was allowed for the necessary prepa- 
rations, and the 15th of August, 1096, was the day appointed 
for the departure of the crusade. 

The whole of France seemed now like a perturbed ocean. 
The barons were scUing and pawning their lands to raise 
money for the expedition : the citizens were seizing the oppor- 
tunity to purchase privileges and immunities, which the no- 
bles, regardless of every thing but the present occasion, were 
now willing to sell to them. Even the very dregs of tht 
people were inflamed wdth the universal zeal for crusading, 
and flocked in crowds to join the sacred banner. The lead- 
ers of the enterprise shranlf from encumbering themselves with 
such an useless and disorderly mob. It was therefore agreed 
that these people should proceed to Palestine by themselves. 
Peter the Hermit and Walter the Pennyless (a Norman gen 
tleman) undertook to be their leaders, and on the 8th of March, 
anticipating the day which had been fixed at Clermont, Wal 
ter crossed the Hhine with the first crusaders. 

There appears to have been among their whole body only a 
comparatively small number of soldiers. The rest of the mul 
titude was a disorderly rabble, in which was a great numbei 
of women and children. It seems to be clear that they had 
no cavahy (it is said that there were only eight horses among 
them), and that they were in all other respects, equally 
dnprovided. Indeed, the greater part were ignorant what 
listance they had to go, and through what countries they 
(vould have to pass. It was enough for them to know that 
they were going to the Holy Land, and that their priests had 
assured them that this object, if attained, would secure the 
eternal salvation of their souls. They imagined that, in the 
mean time, God would feed them on the way, as he had fed 
the Israelites of old in the wilderness. 

When they had passed beyond the confines of France, and 
heard a strange language spoken, some of them supposed the_, 
had already arrived near the end of their journey ; and the 
poor children, with an eagerness natural to their age, would 
inquire at every town "if that was Jerusalem ?" Alas I none 
of them ever reached the promised land. Their conductors 
hid them by way of Huriga' f and Bulgaria ; but their knowl- 
edge r»f geography was very mperfect, and they often wandered 

Dieu veult 



•V.D. 109b.j VHILIP I. 9l 

about at random, sometimes following' the track of an animal, 
or the flight of a bird, which they would fancy was expressly 
sent to guide them. 

Finding themselves disappointed of the quails and manna 
Ihey had expected, they were compelled to resort to force to 
rtbtain food, and consequently the inhabitants of the countries 
through which they passed rose against them. At one place 
we are told that the Danube was turned from its channel by 
the profusion of slaughtered bodies which were thrown into 
the river. Nearly the whole of this vast multitude fell a 
sacrifice to hunger, fatigue, or popular fury. A few who 
reached the opposite shores of the Bosphorus survived only to 
experience the greater misery of falling into the hands of the 
Turks. Peter and Walter, however, their ignorant and pre- 
sumptuous leaders, lived to return, and we afterward find 
them in the great armament which departed from France in 
the autumn of 1096. 

This great armament amounted in the whole to the im- 
mense number of 300,000 fighting men, assembled from dif 
ferent nations, but chiefly from France. It was agreed that, 
on account of the diiliculty of procuring provisions for so vast 
a multitude, they should march in three divisions, each divis- 
ion taking a different route. 

The first division was commanded by Godfrey of Bouillon, 
a warrior of high renown, who, if we may believe the concur- 
rent testimony of historians and poets, was actuated to this 
undertaking solely by motives of piety. He was accompanied 
by his two brothers, Baldwin and Eustace. 

The king of France's brother, Hugh de Vermandois ; Rob- 
ert, son of William the Conqueror ; Stephen de Blois (father 
of king Stephen of England) ; Robert, earl of Flanders, with 
many other princes, were in the second division ; and being 
all of them, too proud and too independent to submit to any 
leader, they each, though they agreed to keep together, inarched 
under separate banners. 

The third division was commanded by Raymond of Tou- 
louse, a venerable knight, who was as much esteemed for 
wisdom as for valor. He was lord of one of the finest districts 
of France, and was one of her most powerful princes ; but he 
fpitted all, from motives of rehgion, and resigning his territo- 
ries to his son, abandoned his country with the determination 
fiever to return. 

When this enormous host reached Constantinople, the em- 
peror Alexis was overwhelmed with astonishment, and sin- 



9SL PHILIP 1 IChap. IX 

cerely lepented of having asked aid from Europe. The cru« 
saders, presuming on the holiness of their cause, came more 
Hke masters than like friends and alhes. They treated tha 
emperor with insolence, looked on his people as barbarians, 
and considered themselves licensed to commit every kind of 
violence and disorder. The emperor, on the other hand, as 
was very natural, viewed them with suspicion, and, perhaps, 
behaved to them deceitfully. At last they quitted Constan- 
tmopie, and after a series of adventures, which it would be 
too long to relate, but during which they possessed them- 
selves of the towns of Nice in Bithynia, and of Antioch, they 
arrived with a remnant of their army within sight of Jeru- 
salem. They laid siege to the holy city, which they took. 
On July 14, 1099, the standard of the Cross was planted on 
the walls. 

Godfrey, their general, was elected king of Jerusalem, and 
the greater part of the crusaders returned home, leaving the 
new king begirt with dangers. On their arrival in Franca 
they were reproached by their countrymen with having aban- 
doned their brave leader; and some of them, among whom 
was Hugh de Vermandois, resolved to return to Palestine and 
retrieve their reputation. Accordingly, in 1101, a new expe- 
dition was fitted out. 

The command of this expedition was given to William of 
Poitiers, duke of Aquitaine, who, from the extent of his posses- 
sions and from his various talents, was one of the most con- 
siderable princes of his time. He was not only the friend and 
protector of poets and troubadours, but he was also a trouba- 
dour himself; and some of his poetry is still extant. His court 
was filled with minstrels and jesters, and was more celebr-ated 
or its gayety than for its decorum. 

The fate of the army which William of Poitiers led into 
the East was even more unfortunate than that of the former 
one. It arrived in tolerable order at Constantinople ; but 
there the pride of William drew on him the persona\ enmity 
of the emperor, who is accused, but with what truth I do not 
pretend to say, of revenging himself by giving him false 
guides. The crusading army was led into situations which 
exposed it to the attack of the Turks,- and was defeated with 
the most horrible slaughter. William of Poitiers and some 
of the nobles saved their lives by flight : Hugh de Vermandois 
escaped to Tarsus, in Cilicia, but died soon afterward of his 
wounds. 

While all these scenes were passing in Palestii ?. in Franc* 



AD. 1130.! I'HELLP I. 9? 

the king was su lik in sloth and sensuality, and appeared 
scarcely to know that 3. crusade was going on. 

Willi im duke of Normandy had conquered England in 
1066, and died in 1087, leaving Normandy to his son Robert, 
and England to William Rufus. You probably recollect that 
Robert pawned his duchy to his brother, that he might be 
able to take the Cross. Wilham not only tried every means 
<.o keep possession of Normandy, but also endeavored to ex- 
tend its limits. He made several attacks on the French 
territories, but was bravely repulsed by Louis, the king's 
eldest son, who was at that time quite a youth, and had only 
a small number of troops at his command. In 1100 William 
was killed in the New Forest, and the young prince of France 
was then left at leisure to turn his arms against enemies nearer 
liome. 

These enemies were the lords of Montlheri, of Montford, 
and other vassals of the crown, who, taking advantage of the 
indolence and incapacity of the king, had erected castles and 
towers, from whence they saUied forth like captains of banditti. 
Some of these towers were in the road between Paris and 
Orleans ; so that it was not possible to travel from the one 
town to the other with safety. Louis chastised, in some 
measure, the insolence of these barons, and he gained so 
much popularity, that it drew upon him the increased hatred 
of Bertrade, who eagerly desired his death, since it would 
open the way of Philip, her own son, to the throne. She 
even gave Louis a slow poison, which woidd have been fatal 
but for the timely antidotes given him by a skillful physician. 
He always, however, felt the deleterious effects of this poison ; 
his complexion was ever after of a death-like paleness. Louis 
himself does not entirely escape blame in these quarrels with 
his mother-in-law. He is even accused of having one day, in 
the heat of passion, attempted to stab her. Philip was greatly 
distressed by these contentions between his wife and his son, 
and at last succeeded in reconciling them. Louis, in his 
childhood, had been totally neglected by his father, who had 
left him to follow in all things his own inclinations, which, 
as he was of a manly and active temper, naturally led him to 
delight in all the chivalrous exercises which at that time 
formed the chief occupation of the young nobihty. The 
young prince thus acquired hardihood and skill in arms ; he 
also imbibed that finer part of chivalry, an inflexible love 
of honor and integrity. To this he added a natural frank- 
ae.ss of character that made him greatly beloved by the 



M PHILIP I [fjHAP. IX, 

people. He was crowned when he was eighteen oi twenty 
years old ; and his father, apparently glad to be relieved 
from all care and trouble, resigned to him the entire govern- 
ment of the kingdom. Philip had frequently been excom- 
municated by the pope for having married Bertrade, whose 
first husband, Fulk of Anjou, was still alive. He contrived, 
however, to pacify the indignant pope, by making promises to 
repudiate her ; but these promises he never performed. His 
slothful life was terminated in 1108, when he died, in the 
fifty-seventh year of his age, and fiftieth of his reign. On his 
death he showed some consciousness of his own unworthiness ; 
for he desired to be buried in the Abbey of St. Benoit on the 
Loire, and not in the Abbey of St. Denis, the usual burial- 
place of the French kings, being, as he said, too great a sinner 
to presume to lay his bones by those of the great martyr. 

By his first wife. Bertha of Holland, he had — 

(1.) Louis, who succeeded him. (2.) Constance, married 
Boemond, prince of Antioch. 

By Bertrade he had — 

(3.) Philip. (4.) Fleury. (5.) Cecilia, married, first, 
Tancred, nephew to Boemond of Antioch ; and, secondly, 
Alphonso of Tripoli, son of Raymond of Toulouse. 

Philip was the first French king who altered the coin. 
In his time a species of money was circulated, which wa? 
nothing more than a piece of leather, in the center of which 
w;as stuck a small silver nail. 

The sovereignty of the crown of France did not at this 
time extend over more than a district of between thirty and 
forty square leagues, of which Paris was the capital city, and 
Orleans the next in importance. The monarchy had now 
reached its lowest state of debasement, and from this time it 
began to rise ; and you will see it increase in power and 
dominion in every succeeding century. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER IX. 

Richard. T should like to knoAV how the rest of Franco 
was disposed of, since the king had so little of it. 

Mrs. MarkJmm. The country was at that time subject to 
Buch perpetual changes that it is almost impossible to define 
the limits of every separate state ; but, as nearly as their 
relative proportions can now be guessed at, France, in th>3 
eleventh century, was divided as follows : — 

The sovereignty of the king extended over a territory equa- 



G-Jsv ] PHILIP I 9.1 

lo aljout five of the present departixents ; the count ol Ver- 
tnandois in Picardy had two ; the count of Boulogne, one ; 
the earl of Flanders, four ; the two families of Champagnfl 
and Blois, six ; the duke of Burgundy, three ; the duke of 
Bretagne, five ; the count of Poitiers, seven ; the count ol 
Anjou, tlu-ee ; the duchy of Normandy, five ; the duchies ol 
Guienne and Aquitaine might be estimated at twenty-four 
The emperor of Germany and the counts of Toulouse shared 
the sovereignty of Lorraine, part of Burgundy, and the ancient 
kingdom of Provence ; and these were about equal to twenty- 
one departments. Thus we have accounted for the whole 
of the eighty-six departments into which modern France is 
divided. Of these, Anjou, Poitiers, Guienne, and Aquitain<i, 
were at one time, as well as Normandy, possessed by the 
kings of England, and they together were equal to thirty- 
nine departments. 

George. It seems to me, mamma, that those old kings 
of England were very clever fellows. At least they were a 
great deal cleverer than the kings of France. 

Mrs. M. I do not, on the whole, greatly admire tlie 
characters of the Norman race of kings ; however, I agree 
with you that they appear to great advantage compared lo 
the Capetian kings. The Normans were a bold and enter 
prising people, and united in an eminent degree great activity 
of body with ardor of mind ; and they were not only masters 
of England, and of a large part of France, but had also ob- 
tained a considerable settlement in Italy. 

Gem-ge. Pray, let us hear how they got it. 

Mrs. M. About the year 1017, some Norman pilgrims to 
Rome were invited by pope Benedict VIII. to attempt the 
conquest of a part of Apulia, which still remained under the 
yoke of the Greek empire. This enterprise they gladly under- 
took ; and being at difierent times assisted by parties of their 
countrymen, they formed a settlement, which, after a century 
of combats, was the foundation of the Norman kingdom of the 
Two Sicilies. 

Ricliard. "What did they mean by Two Sicilies ? Was 
the island then divided into two ? 

Mrs. M. The kingdom of Naples was at that time de- 
nominated one of the Sicilies ; the island, of course, was the 
other. About the year 1053, the Normans in Apulia greatly 
increased their power by a victory which they gained ovei 
the pope. Leo IX., who had wished to drive them out of 
lt».ly. The Normans Avere at that tinae commanded bv 



Sr, PHILIP I. [Chap. ,'X 

Pi,obert Guiscard, or the Robber. 1 .e was oae of the twelve 
sons of Tancred le Hautville, a descendant from Rollo, andl 
seemed to have inherited mnch of the powerful mind of \m 
great ancestor. He took the pope prisoner ; and though ha 
treated him with the most profound personal respect, yet he 
would not release him tiU he had obtained from him the in-r 
vestiture of the dukedom of Apulia, which he had in part 
conquered, and also that of Calabria and Sicily, which he 
hoped to ftDnquer. It does not appear that Leo had any 
right to bestow these territories ; but it sufficiently answered 
the purpose of Guiscard that he should assume it. 

George. Then pray, mamma, whom did these territories 
really belong to ? 

M?-s. M. Sicily belonged to the Saracens ; they having 
conquered it some time in the seventh century, and having 
remained its undisturbed masters till 1038, when the emperor 
of Constantinople made an attempt to get it from them. He 
did not, however, succeed ; and E-obert Guiscard and his 
brothers, after a ten years' struggle, got possession of it. 

Mary. I think that Guiscard had not his name of Robber 
fi/r nothing. 

Mrs. M. As for Calabria, I can scarcely tell you whom 
it belonged to. The Saracens and the two emperors of the 
East and the West were contending for it at one and the 
same time ; at last the Normans subdued them all, and in 
1080 Robert Guiscard was again invested by the pope with 
the provinces of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, which he held 
as fiefs of the holy see. He died in 1085, having, a short 
time before his death, gained a great victorj'^ at sea over the 
Greeks. 

Richard. He must have been a stout old feUow to go 
fighting on for so many years. 

Mrs. M. He had a son named Boemond, who was what, 
I suppose, you would call another stout old fellow. He served 
in the crusade under Godfrey of BouiUon ; and when the city 
of Antioch was won from the Turks, he was made prince of 
it. He was, however, so closely beset on all sides by both 
Turks and Greeks, that he had great difficulty in keeping 
possession of his principality. He ardently desired to return 
to Sicily to procure a supply of soldiers, but the difficulty was 
how to get there At last he hit upon a most smgular expe- 
dient to elude the vigilance of his enemies. 

Mary. I suppose he put on some strange disguise. 

Mrs. M- He dared not trust to any d'sguiso. He caused 



(JuN^.j FHILir 1. ft 

it to be reported that lie was dead, and havi.'ig procured a 
coffin, bored with holes, which would enable him to breathe, 
he got inta it, and ordered his attendants to request leave of 
the Turks and of the emperor of Constantinople to carry 
their dead master's body through their territories to be buried 
in Europe. Leave being given, he was carried in this man- 
ner till he got to Corfu, where he believed himself beyond the 
reach of his enemies. He then got out of his coffin, and sent 
a message back to Alexis to say, that " the prince of Antioch 
was alive, and as much his enemy as ever." 

George. And how did it end ? 

Mrs. M. It ended in his keeping his word with the em 
peror almost to the last. He returned from Italy with re- 
inforcements, and kept up a constant hostility against Alexis, 
till a short time before his death, in 1111, when, his army 
being in danger of starvation, he consented to an amicable 
treaty. 

Richard. Was that the same emperor Alexis who gave 
William of Poitiers the false guides ? 

Mrs. M. It was. I think you never heard of a more 
shocking piece of treachery. 

Mary. But if the crusajders behaved so ill to him, it could 
not be supposed that he would be very fond of them. 

Mrs. M. There doubtless were very great faults on both 
Bides. The conduct of the Latins (as the Europeans were 
called in the East) was in many instances very unpardon- 
able. They treated the emperor and his people with undis 
guised contempt. A young Norman knight had one day the 
insolence to place himself on the imperial throne in the em- 
peror's presence ; he was, however, reproved by his superior 
officer, and made to descend. It is said that another of the 
Latuis slew, out of sheer insolence, a tame lion which was a 
iirreat favorite with the emperor. When the crusaders cross- 
<?d into Asia, they chose to believe that all the inhabitants 
were Turks, and thus Christians and infidels alike suffered 
from their ferocity. After this you will not be surprised that 
they were considered and treated as enemies wherever they 
came. 

Richard. I only wonder how any of them were allowed 
to get away alive. 

M 'S. M. It appears that very few, excepting the nobles, 
tscaped. 

Alary. Had the Turks more compassion on them than oa 
*■■ ,ie others ? 

E 



98 



PHILIP I. L^HiP. IX 



Mrs. M. I believe the reason WuS, that the nohles were 
always well mounted and well armed. The great mass of 
the soldiers were serfs, who were drawn from their peaceful 
homes to swell the train of their lords, who were all emulous 
to vie with one another in the number of their followers. 
These poor people marched on foot, and were sHghtly armed, 
having only a sword and a buckler. They had therefore 
neither means of defense nor of flight, and fell at the first 
onset with the enemy, like chaff before the wind. 

Richard. Pray, mamma, is there not some v«ry fine pocro 
about the crusades ? 

Mrs. M. You mean, probably, the Jerusalcn> Delivered 
It is an Itahan poem written by Tasso, and is on<^ i f 1he mo?l 
beautiful that is to be found in any language. 

George. I think you once told us, mamma, that the Eu- 
gUsh first used crests and coats of arms in the crusades ; di^ 
the French also use them ? 

Mrs. M. They were in use among all the crusaders, an^ 
it was the business of the heralds of the army to make them 
selves acquainted with the different bearings of the different 
chiefs. 

Richard. And did the French continue to use them afte» 
they came home, as the English did 1 

Mrs. M. Yes, just like the English ; and the custom wa> 
immediately adopted by all the nobles throughout France, a* 
creating an additional barrier between themselves and th* 
middle classes, who, from their increasing riches and numbers, 
were, to use a homely phrase, fast treading on the heels of. 
the nobility. 

George. That must have made these proud lords ver^- 
angry. 

Mrs. M. Many causes had combined to bring the uppe» 
and middle classes nearer together. Among the chief of thes^ 
causes we may reckon the crusades, which had been so great 
ly conducive to enrich the commoners at the expense of tho 
nobles. Many of those who had allowed their serfs to pur- 
chase their freedom were displeased when they returned hom« 
at finding how much they had diminished their own powei 
by having thus allowed their former dependents to escape fron> 
their rule. They therefore combined to maintain their own 
personal dignity and importance by every artificial means iu 
their power, and assumed family surnames, as wbU as family 
scats of arras, as a farther distinction between themselves and 
the middle classes. 



CoNV 1 PHILIP I. -s4 

Richard. Could the merchants and those sort cf people 
be made knights at the time you are spealting of ? 

M7-S. M. Certainly not, according to the laws of knight* 
hood ; nor could any one who was not of noble birth be ad- 
mitted to enter the lists at a tournament. 

George. Were there tournaments, then, in France, so 
long ago ] 

Mrs. M. The French claim the honor of inventing them, 
and the mventor is said to have been a certain Geofiry de 
Pruilly, and to have lived about the middle of the eleventh 
century. But in all probability the tournament was only an 
improvement on the warlike games which the chivalrous 
customs of the times had introduced among the young men, 
who were accustomed to assemble in little parties from two 
or more neighboring castles to make friendly trials of their 
skill. By degrees these trials at arms came to be attended 
with more and miore pomp and ceremony, till at last they 
became almost affairs of state. Pruilly, however, seems to 
have the just credit of inventing, if not the tournamenJ 
itself, at least the laws and ceremonies by which it was con 
ducted. 

George. And do you know what the laws were ? 

Mrs. M. They were so many and so minute, that I can 
only attempt to tell you a few of the most important. The 
chief object of the competitors in these mock combats was 
to unhorse each other, and not to wound. It was therefore 
against the rules for a combatant to be fastened to his saddle, 
or to use a,ny deadly weapons. 

George. Then what weapons were they to use ? 

Mrs. M. Lances, staffs, and sometimes wooden swords 
This law, I believe, was not very strictly kept, as we often 
read of the knight being wounded, and severely, too, with 
sharp swords. 

Ricliard. It always seems very surprising how the knighta 
could fight, and gallop, and wheel about, cased in all that 
armor. 

Mrs. M. I am still more surprised at the horses, how 
they could move with all those trappings.* These tourna- 
ments were so exactly suited to the temper of the French, 
that their fondness for them became almost a madness. Even 
the ladies used to be present at them, and entered with tha 
greatest vivacity into the success of the several combatants. 
They would encourage their favorite knights by decking them 
* See the vignette at the head of Chtpter VIIl 



l«0 PHILir I [CuAr, IX 

with ribbons and scarfs from their own dress and during a 
long and anxious combat the poor ladies would appear at last 
almost stripped of their finery, which was seen tied to the ar- 
mor of the combatants. In time the cost of these tournaments 
was carried to an inordinate excess ; and there are many in- 
stances in which a French noble has been contented to end 
his days in distress, and to consign his children to poverty and 
obscurity, for the sake of giving a splendid tournament. Their 
dress and the equipment of themselves and their horses were 
enormously expensive. There were some who carried their 
foUy so far as to have the shields they used on those occa- 
sions set with jewels. 

George. Well ! I think that is the most foolish piece of 
vanity I ever heard of. 

Mrs. M. I can teU you of another still more foolish : 
There came up about this time a fashion of wearing immense 
peaks to the shoes. It was invented by the earl of Anjou, 
Bertrade's first husband, to hide some strange deformity in his 
feet. The fashion was immediately adopted in France, and 
the Normans brought it over to England. An old French 
writer tells us that they were worn two feet in length, and 
shaped like the tails of scorpions. The same writer tells us 
also that in a battle between the Greeks and some Norman 
knights, the latter were invincible as long as they remained 
upon their horses ; but that when dismounted they became 
a certain prey to their enemies, being rendered perfectly help- 
less by the length of their shoes, which hindered them iironj 
walking ex«ept -with the perpe^^ual danger of falling dowa at 
eTery step. 



CHAPTER X. 

LOUIS VI., SUllNAMED THK FAT. 
[Years after Christ, 110&-1137.] 




Ladies in the Dress of the Fifteenth CENTrnT. 

Iiouis, who had been associated in the crown at the aji t of 
eighteen or twenty, was about thirty years old when his fa»iiei 
died. He had no taste for learning, nor any political taleitts : 
but he had what was far better, a good heart, an inflexible 
love of justice, a friendly disposition, and a gay and cheerful 
temper. It might, however, be said of him, that his love of 
justice was on some occasions too inflexible, and led him to 
punish offenders with excessive rigor, and to oppose violence 
with violence. 

He was naturally brave and exceedingly active, nor did he 
allow his corpulence, which was such as to acquire him the 
surname of the Fat, to render him indolent. He never re- 
laxed in his vigilance, nor in his endeavors to protect the 
weaker part of his subjects from the oppressions of the rich 
he was almost continually engaged in petty wars against his 
nobles ; and while he was with his army, he lived with his 
soldiers more hke their comrade than their Ling, partaking 
ef the same hardships, and exposing himself to the samo 
dangers. 



102 tOUIS VI. [Chap X. 

I have alreaiy said, that the great lords in the neighhor 
bwd of Paris, taking advantage of the supineness of the late 
king, had many of them sought to repair their lessened for- 
tunes hy turning robbers. Their castles were filled with 
armed men, who were continually on the watch for travelers, 
whom they attacked and robbed, and sometimes murdered. 
If a rich naerchant was so unfortunate as to fall into the 
hands of these marauders, he was imprisoned in the castle 
dungeon, and tortured till he would agree to pay such a ran- 
som as the lord of the castle chose to demand. 

Louis had endeavored during his father's life-time to re 
press these practices, and as soon as he was established on the 
throne, he set himself diligently to punish the offenders. He 
foimd this, however, a very difficult task ; for no sooner was 
one subdued than another arose up in his place. He had 
hoped to win over one of the most powerful of those depreda- 
tors, by causing his own brother Philip to marry his daughter 
and heiress. But Philip joined with his father-in-lav/, and 
thus the king had two enemies where he before had one. 

In a few years Louis found himself called on to attack a 
more distant enemy. Henry I. of England, having unjustly 
seized on Normandy, kept his unfortunate brother Robert in 
perpetual imprisonment, and obliged his son William to fly 
for safety and protection to the king of France. Louis readily 
granted William the protection he sought, and in 1119, being 
joined by many nobles who were alarmed by the increasing 
power of Henry (who had built the castle of Gisors to over- 
awe the frontier), marched with a considerable army into 
Normandy. A battle was fought between the two monarchs 
at Brenneville, which terminated to the advantage of the 
English. The loss was not great on either side. Owing to 
the eagerness of each party to take their enemies alive, for the 
sake of their ransoms, only three knights were slain. A peace 
was afterward effected between the two kings by the good 
offices of pope Calixtus II., who was at that time in France, 
having fled from the disturbances in Italy, occasioned by the 
contest, which was still as violent as ever, between the em- 
peror Henry V. and the cardinals. 

In 1124 the war again broke out between Louis and the 
king of England, who called upon the emperor of Germany, 
who had married his daughter Matilda, to assist him. The 
emperor was glad to be revenged on Louis for the protection 
he had given to Calixtus, and set about preparing for the in- 
vaeion of France. 



A..I). J124.J LOUIS Vl. lOi 

Louis had no means within his own small territory ot repel 
ling so powerful a foe ; he therefore unfurled the orijlunirac, 
a banner which was kept with great veneration in the Abbey 
of St. Denis, the titular saint of France, and which was to ba 
hi ought forth only on the most important emergencies. 

The unfurhng of the oriflamme called on all the feudal 
retainers of France, from one end of the country to the other, 
to assemble round their king, and to follow him to the war. 
The summons was promptly obeyed, and Louis found himself, 
almost, as it were, instantaneously, at the head of 200,000 
fighting men. The intended invasion, however, never took 
place, the emperor dying in 1125. A short time before his 
death he had made peace with Calixtus, who returned to 
Rome, and tranquillity was for a time restored to Italy. 

In the year 1127, Louis bestowed on Wilham, the young 
prince of Normandy, the earldom of Flanders, to which in 
deed he had a claim in right of his grandmother Matilda, the 
wife of the Conqueror. But William had a very short enjoy- 
ment of his earldom. He died in consequence of a neglected 
wound, while yet in the flower of his age. 

In 1131 Louis had the misfortune to lose his eldest son, a 
very promising youth, who had been crowned about two years 
before. The manner of this prince's death exposes to us the 
neglected and filthy state in which the streets of Paris were 
then sufiered to be kept. The streets were very narrow, and 
full of dirt and rubbish, and pigs were allowed to range about 
in them. One of these pigs ran against the horse which the 
young prince was riding, and caused him to fall ; and the rider 
was so severely hurt as only to survive a few hours. On this 
occasion an order was issued declaring that no pigs should be 
in future sufliered in the streets. The monks of the Abbey of 
St. Anthony remonstrated against this order, and an especial 
permission was given to their pigs to run in the streets, pro- 
vided they had bells about their necks. 

The death of his eldest son caused such inexpressible grief 
to Louis, that he was for a time too much overpowered by it 
to be able to attend to pubhc affairs. 

In 1 132 he crowned his next son, Louis, who was then only 
twelve years old. Antiquaries conjecture that it was upon 
this occasion that the peers of France were reduced in num- 
Der, and Limited to twelve. 

The king, as he advanced in life, found the inconvenience 
of his excessive corpulence to increase, and that his constitu- 
tion was fast breakinff down. In 1134 he was seized with 



m^ LOUIS VI. [Chap. \. 

an alarming illness, and believing his end approaching, he -was 
anxious to be reconciled to his enemies and to die in peaoc 
with all the world. Contrary to his expectation he recovered, 
and hved three years afterward ; but his resolutions survived 
the first alarm of his illness, and he passed these last three 
years in tranquillity. 

The death of Henry of England, in 1136, delivered him 
from Ms most formidable enemy ; and Stephen, who seized on 
England and Normandy, was too much occupied in defending 
himself against Matilda and her husband Geofiry to have time 
to turn his attention toward France. 

Geoffry Plantagenet was so much disliked by the Normans, 
who knew his violent and unfeeling temper, that they gladly 
acknowledged Stephen as their duke. William the Tenth, 
duke of Aquitaine, took the part of GeofTry, and joined him in 
making an invasion of Normandy ; but the dreadful excesses 
committed by these invaders only confirmed the Normans in 
their detestation of Geofiry, who was obliged to retire into 
Anjou. Upon Geofiry 's death, however, in 1151, the Nor- 
mans acknowledged his son Henry as their duke. 

In the mean time the recollection of the cruelties which he 
had committed in the invasion of Normandy dwelt on the 
mind of the duke of Aquitaine. The best measure he could 
devise to relieve the burden of his troubled conscience was to 
go on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James of Compostella. 
in Spain. He set about arranging all his affairs before he 
went, and believed that he had provided for the security both 
of his family and his dorriinions, by offering Eleanor, his eldest 
daughter and heiress, in marriage to Louis, the eldest son of 
the king of France. William proceeded on his pilgrimage, 
and died in the church of Compostella during the performance 
of divine service. .v. 

The marriage of Louis of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine 
and Guiemie was celebrated at Bordeaux with all suitable 
pomp ; but as the youthful couple were on their way to Paris, 
they were met at Poitiers by messengers who brought them 
the news of the king's death. 

Louis the Fat died August 1, 1137, and never was a king 
of France more sincerely lamented, more particularly by the 
poorer classes of his subjects, whose friend and protector he 
had always been. He died in the fifty-eighth year of his age, 
and the thirtieth of his reign. 

When young, his father had made him marry a sister ol 
tho cruel Hugh de Cressy ; but he divorced her as soon as he 



A.D. 1137.] - LOUIS VI. 10: 

was his own mast(;r. In 1115 he married Adelaide of yavoy, 
by whom he had six sons and one daughter : 

(1.) Philip, who died in consequence of a fall from hia 
horse. (2.) Louis, succeeded his father. (3.) K-oLert, count 
of Dreux. (4.) Peter, married the heiress of the Courtenays. 
(5.) Henry, ecclesiasl/c. (6.) Philip, ecclesiastic. 

Constance married, first, Eustace, count of Boulogne ; sec- 
ondly, Raymond V., count of Toulouse 

Louis, during his wars with the Larons, found that the 
strength of his government lay among the merchants and 
to\vnspeople, and he therefore united his interest with theirs 
against the nobles, and granted the towns many valuable 
charters and immunities, which tended to deliver the citizens 
from the excessive tyranny of their immediate feudal superiors. 
One of the clauses in these charters fully proves how much 
the citizens stood in need of protection. It was this : — That 
all criminals should, if found guilty, be punished according to 
the estabhshed law of the land, and not according to the wiU 
or caprice of their lord. 

The citizens were glad to avail themselves of the good in 
clination of the king toward them, to procure charters for 
forming themselves into comm,u9ies, which was another word 
for associations for mutual defense. It was the practice of 
these communes to elect from among themselves a chief magis- 
trate, whose business it was to watch over the safety of the 
rest, who were all to assist him in time of danger. 

The formation of these communes was strenuously opposed 
by the nobles, whose despotic sway they greatly abridged ; 
and they were one chief cause that lengthened out the wars 
between them and the king. 

Some writers give Louis more merit than he probably de- 
served in regard to the charters which he granted to the 
towns, and say that they proceeded from his love of freedom 
and justice ; but the probability is, that he was induced to 
grant them for the sake of weakening the power of the nobil- 
ity, and also for the sake of +he money which the citizens 
were willing to give for their enfranchisement ; and it is sin- 
gidar that he would not alloAV communes in his own good 
towns of Paris and Orleans. 

Whatever were the king's motives, the effect was eminent- 
ly beneficial. The people began to feel themselves no longer 
at the mercy of capricious and often cruel masters. Arts, 
sciences, and commerce flourished ; waste lands were brought 
into cultivation ; the chains of slavery were broken. In an 



»Ofj LOUIS VI. ' [Uhap. X 

othi3r oiiitury freedom spread from the towns into the country 
districts, and the peasants were no longer hought and sold 
with the trees that grew on the soil. In the course of time 
the cities became so rich and powerful that it was thought 
necessary to admit deputies from the communes into the gen- 
eral assembhes of the nation, which till then could only be 
attended by nobles and prelates. But the proper date of 
these last great changes is the fourteenth century, and I shaU 
have to speak of them again in their place. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER X. 

George. I am afraid it is a foohsh kind of curiosity, but I 
can not help puzzhng myself with thinking what sort of tor- 
tures these wicked barons inflicted on their rich prisoners. 

Mrs. Markham. It is not a species of knowledge that will 
give you either pleasure or instruction. However, that you 
may not -puzzle yourself any longer, I wiU describe to you 
)ne of their common modes of torture. The unfortunate 
wretch was laid on his back on the ground, and heavyweights 
were heaped upon him till he agreed to pay the ransom that 
was demanded. 

Richard. But suppose he would not agree, what was 
flone then ? 

ilfrs. M.. Then more weights were heaped upon him till 
he died. 

Mary. Oh, paamma, how horrible I I do not wonder tha 
king wanted to rid the country of such cruel people. 

RicJiard. Indeed I think that it was now high time to 
place the people under the protection of the law, and to de- 
liver them from the caprice and tyramry of the nobles. 

Mrs. M. Among the many great changes which about 
this time took place in the condition of soeiety, there was 
none more remarkable than the increasing taste for learning 
which was to be observed, more or less, among all ranks of 
people ; at least among all who were raised above poverty. 

Ridiard. Was Louis an encourager of learning ? 

Mrs. M. He had no taste for learning himself He had 
been left, rather through carelessness than indulgence, to fol- 
low, when a child, his own inchnations, which led liim, as 1 
have already said, to chivalrous sports rather than to study. 
The chief cause that encouraged learning in this reign was, 
that the sale of benefices being considerably if not totally 



Co XV. J LOUIS VI.: tm 

checked, the load to church preferment became eiJeetualiy 
opened to all who were eminent for learning or virtue. Low 
birth, which was an exclusion from other dignities, was nc 
bar to advancement in the church. This gave a great stim- 
ulus to the middle classes. The schools were filled with 
students, and it was extraordinary to see what a striking ef- 
fect this love of study had upon the manners of the inhabit 
ants of the towns, who became infinitely more civilized than 
formerly. 

George. That was just as it ought to be ; because you 
know, mamma, papa was telling us this very day that the 
word civilization is borrowed from citizen. 

Ricliard. Were there any vei^ great men among the 
scholars of this time ? 

Mrs. M. I believe I may name two who were very emi- 
nent : one was the Abbe Segur, and the other was Abelard. 
Segur is spoken of as being one of the wisest and m.ost virtu- 
ous ministers that ever governed France under any of her 
kings. He was of obscure birth and of an unprepossessing 
appearance, but had made use of no unworthy arts to pro- 
cure his advancement. He was abbe of St. Denis, and chief 
counselor to Louis the Fat, and afterward to his son Louis 
VII. He was a man of uncommon learning, and possessed, 
what is perhaps still more rare, an excellent judgment in the 
afiuirs of life. Abelard, the other great genius of this age, 
was a teacher of rhetoric, philosophy, and theology. So nu- 
Misrous was the concourse of scholars who flocked to hear 
him, that he was obliged to deliver his lectures in the open 
air, no hall in Paris being found capacious enough to contain. 
his audience. 

Ridiard. Did the nobles flock to hear these lectures, or 
were the students cliiefly of the middle classes ? 

Mrs. M. I do not suppose that Abelard had many nobles 
among his scholars. The nobility appear to have left the 
more serious studies to the inferior classes, and to have devoted 
themselves almost exclusix'^ely to poetry and romances. An 
acquaintance with the writings of the troubadours and trou- 
veres was now become a necessary part of the education of 
gentlemen, and of ladies also. 

Mary. Pray, mamma, who were the troubadours and the 
trouveres ? 

Mrs. M. They were poets and romance writers. The 
earliest troubadours were natives of Provence, who, instead 
of writing in Latin, composed songs in their native dialect 



108 LOUIS VI. L^HAP. X 

Tney were in general persons of no education, but had tli* 
happy art of fascinating their hearers by the haraiony and 
simphcity of their verses. From this time the Provencal, or 
language of Provence, became the language of poetry, and, 
for the space of two or three centuries, was universally studied 
and admired. At length it ceased, all of a sudden, to be cul- 
tivated, and it is now almost forgotten, at least as a written 
language, although it may still be traced in the provincial 
dialects which are spoken in the south of France. One of 
the singularities of the poetry of the troubadours, and what 
made it, I suppose, so captivating to every ear, was, that it 
was written in rhyme, which they were the first to introduce 
into France, and which they are supposed to have learned 
from the Arabians. 

Mary. It is very odd that they could not find out rhyme 
for themselves ; it seems to me the most natural thing in the 
world. 

Richard. Is there any of the poetry of the troubadours 
now existing ? 

Mrs. M. There are, I understand, immense numbers of 
Provencal manuscripts preserved in the Royal Library at 
Paris, but the language is so obsolete that they are unintel- 
ligible to most readers. I have met with translations of some 
of the songs of the troubadours, which appeared to me very 
flat and tedious, being, chiefly compliments to the beauty, or 
complaints of the cruelty, of the ladies whom they pretended 
to admire. The troubadours were the greatest of all flatter- 
ers, and that probably made their poetry so delightful to 
those for whom it was written. They led wandering lives, 
and roved about at their pleasure, and were welcomed wher 
ever they went. 

Mary. And pray, mamma, who were the trouvcres ? 

Mrs. M. They were the jDoets of the north of France. 
Their songs were written in the French Wallon language, 
which, as I have before remarked, is the original language 
from which modern French is derived. The troubadours 
wrote only poetry ; but the trouveres were not only poets, 
but also wrote prose romances ; the name of trouveres, which 
signifies finders or inventors, being intended to distinguish 
them from the writers and compilers of true histories and 
chronicles. The first French romances were written bv 
Normans. 

Mary. Was nobody allowed to make verse* « sioriea 
except the regular troubadours and trouveres ? 



CoNV.1 LOUIS VI. I 

Mrs. M. Any "body who could niighi ot a tioubadour 
and when the Provencal poetry became s- n uch admired, 
many persons wrote verses for their amusement who were 
not poets by profession. William of Poitiers, of whom I 
have spoken to you as the leader of the second warlike expe- 
dition to the Holy Land, was a very famous troubadour in 
his day. A taste for poetry was at one time carried to such 
an excess among the higher orders, that every lady who was 
eminent for rank or beauty had her poet. And while the 
gentlemen had their tournaments and trials at arms, the 
ladies had what they called their courts of love and their 
trial of wits. At these meetings all poets were challenged tc 
appear and to recite their verses ; judges were appointed to 
decide on the merits of the competitors ; and prizes were 
given to the successful poet, with infinite parade and pomp. 
In these courts, a lady of the highest rank always presided, 
and they formed what might be called the dissipation of 
fashionable life in that period, and were the resort of all the 
frivolous characters of both sexes. In time they assumed a 
still greater solemnity, and became petty courts of justice for 
the settling of difficult cases of precedency, and of nice points 
in etiquette, and sometimes for the trial of graceless lovers. 
The discussions at these assemblies were so trivial and ridicu- 
lous, and their sentences awarded with so much parade and 
pomposity, that we are now puzzled to determino Avhethfti 
they were meant as a jest or whether thv'y wf re h^ d in real 
BPtriousness. 



CHAPTER XI. 

L(JUIS VII., SURNAMED THE YOUNQ 
[Years after Christ, 1137—1180.] 







Fr. \t of the Church of Notre Dame in Paris. 

Louis, at his acoerfsion, was eighteen years old. He pos- 
a'ssed from nature many arniahle qualities, among which was 
a tenderness of feeling, very unlike that hardness and brutality 
of character which was prevalent in the times he lived in. 
He was very devout, but unhappily his piety chiefly showed 
itself in superstitious observances, and not in that religion 
of the heart by wiiich the moral conduct is regulated. His 
talents were very moderate, and had received little improve- 
ment from education ; he was, however, notwithstanding his 
many errors and weaknesses, gi'eatly beloved by his subjects; 
and a contemporary writer thus speaks of him :' " He was a 
man of fervent devotion toward God, and of an extreme 
gentleness to his subjects ; full of veneration for the clergy, 
but more simple than became a king : and confiding too 
much in the counsels of artful and dishonest men, he left 
more than one stain on his otherwise praiseworthy name." 

In the early part of his life he displayed a degree of courage 
and animation which served to conceal the deficiencies of his 
understanding ; but in after-life,, when by the death of Segur 
and other wise counselors he ^^'as obliged to rely upon his 
own judgment, those deficiencies became but too apparent ; 
more especially when he wa? called into competition witb 



A..D ilI2.] LOUIS VII. Ill 

Henry II. of England, who was the most polit'c and long- 
sighted monarch at that time in Europe. 

In the early part of the young king's reign, he cliiefly 
occupied himself in chivalrous amusements, leaving the 
affairs of the nation to be conducted by Segur. 

In 1142 Louis became entangled in a dispute with pope 
Innocent II. concerning the right of investiture to the benefices 
in France, which Innocent assumed to himself Louis also 
drew on himself another enemy in Thibaud, earl of Cham- 
pagne. Tliibaud's sister had been married to the count of 
Vermandois, and Louis made the count, who was his own 
cousin, divorce her, and marry Petronilla, the sister of queen 
Eleanor, to prevent her dower from falling into the hands 
of any one who would interfere with the interests of France. 
Thibaud immediately commenced hostilities against the king 
and the count of Vermandois. 

Louis marched into Champagne, and took the castle of 
Vitry,* which he afterward set on fire, meaning only to de- 
stroy the fortress ; but the flames, raging more fiercely than 
he had expected, spread to the town, and burnt down a 
church, into which a great number of the inhabitants had 
fled for refuge. The king, who was near enough to hear tho 
shrieks of the dying wretches, and to see their half-consumed 
bodies, was struck with so much remorse and horror at this 
shocking scene, that he gave up the war, and made peace 
with Thibaud. 

Normandy was at this time the scene of a destructive war 
between the house of Anjou and Stephen of England. The 
south of France was also distracted by the contending claims 
of the descendants of the female branches of some of the great 
families which had become extinct in the male line. On a 
sudden all private quarrels were suspended, and all domestic 
concerns forgot. Accounts were received from Palestine that 
the Turks had taken Edessa, a town situate to the north of- 
the Euphrates, and held under the new kingdom of Jerusalem, 
and had massacred all the Christians whom they found there 
This intelligence spread universal consternation. A new cru- 
sade was immediately determined on, and was advocated with 
great earnestness by the king, assisted by St. Bernard, abbot 
of Clairvaux, a man revered for his wisdom and sanctity, and 
whom the people were so much accustomed to consult on all 
occasions, that he might be called the oracle of France. 
Though sinking under the weight of years and infirmities, 
* On the Marnr in the province of Champagne. 



!12 LOUIS VII. [Chalv XI 

he appeared at a meeting held at Vazelay, in 114C, ana 
urged the pec<ple with so much elieo: to take the cross, that 
the cry of " the cross I the cross I" resounded on all sides. 
Crosses were to be fastened on the sleeves of those who 
engaged to join the crusade. These Louis and the abbot 
imdertook to distribute ; and the ardor for the crusade waa 
so great, that they were obliged at last to cut up their cloaks 
to supply the demands of the immense number of people who 
flocked about them asking for crosses. 

Eleanor, as well as Louis, took the cross, and all were to 
be in readiness to depart for Palestine in the spring of the 
year 1147. 

St. Bernard, having roused France, next traversed Germa- 
ny, and at last prevailed on the emperor, Conrad III., though 
somewhat reluctant, to take the cross. 

The wise Segur did all in his power to prevent Louis from 
eiigaging in this mad and destructive undertakmg ; but, see- 
ing that his endeavors were of no use, he made a virtue of 
necessity, and lent his aid in forwarding the expedition. A 
meeting was held at Estampes* early in 1 1 47, for the purpose 
of arrangmg the plan of the route. All the experienced war- 
riors were desirous to go by sea, as being the most expeditious 
and the least hazardous course ; but the king, being young 
and vainglorious, thought lightly of the dangers of the passage 
by land, and would not listen to their sage counsel. His no- 
bles, also, who hoped to maintain their troops by plunder on 
their march, opposed the going by sea, and it was accordingly 
settled that they should follow the usual route, through Ger 
many and Hungary to Constantmople. 

The feast of Pentecost, 1 147, w^as the day fixed for the de 
parture of the army, and Louis employed the intermediatt 
time in preparing himself for his holy work by exercises of 
devotion. On the eve of the day appointed, he repaired to 
St. Denis. t The oriiiamme was presented to him with great 
solemnity by the abbot ; and Louis, to show that he intended 
to visit the Holy Land more as a pilgrim than as a soldier . 
put on a pilgrim's scrip, which had been sent him by the pope. 
The remamder of the day he spent in monldsh observances, 
and he passed the night in one of the cells of the Abbey. 
The next day he and the queen departed for Metz,$ which 
was the place of rendezvous. 

* A few miles south of Paris. 

t A few miles north of Paris, the seat of nri ancient abbey 

t In Lorraine, in the northeast part of if'iance. 



A.D. 1147.] 



LOUIS VII 




Conrad and his Germans, who were ah-eady set out, met 
with a series of continued disasters, chiefly occasioned by theii 
own misconduct. The French, taking warning by their mis- 
fortunes, observed better discipline during their march, and 
arrived in tolerable order at Constantinople, where the empe 
ror Manuel, grandson of Alexis Comnenus, though very far 
from being rejoiced at their coming, yet received them with 
tolerable courtesy. 

After a short rest, the French army proceeded to Nice on 
its way to Antioch. To Antioch there were two roads. One, 
which was about twelve days' journey, lay across the moun- 
tains, and through the midst of the enemy's country ; the 
other road was much more circuitous, but more secure, and 
led along the sea-shore. Conrad had chosen the short but 
more hazardous way : and the first news Louis heard on Iiis 
arrival at Nice was that the Germans had been totally cut to 
pieces by the Turks. Only the emperor and his nephew, 
Frederic Barbarossa, with a few followers, esc aped the general 
slaughter by the fleetness of their horses. 

This dreadful catastrophe determined Louis to pursue the 
aafer road by the coast. The way was tedious, and at last. 



li 



LOUIS VII. Cha.' XI 



beiiiu weary of following all its sinuosities, he resolved, when 
he ieti/..hed th(} river Mseander,* to brave all the dangers of 
the inland country, and to take a short cut from thence to 
Satalia. On this new route he had not advanced far, when ha 
saw the Turks drawn up in order of battle on the other side of 
a ford which the army was just about to cross. The gallant 
crusaders piunged into the water amid a shower of arrows, and 
attacked tht; enemy at the very water's edge, and soon put 
tiiem to flight. Their elation at this victory did not last long, 
foi as they pioceeded their difficulties increased ; the country 
became more luounlainous, and they were perpetually harassed 
by the flying troops of the enemy. Beyond Laodicea the} 
entered on narrow defiles, and were obhged to march in two 
separate bodies. One day the van had been ordered to halt 
in a commanding situation till the rear, in which was the 
king, should come up ; but the leader, seeing a pleasant valley, 
disobeyed his orders, and descended into it. By this ill-judged 
movement, the two divisions of the Christian army were shiit 
out from each other ; and the Turks, who from the heighta 
above watched all their motions, took advantage of it to 
attack the rear, and made a dreadful slaughter. The king 
escaped with the greatest difficulty, and with the loss of all 
his provisions and baggage. 

The relics of this great army were now in a miserable cou 
dition, in an unknown country, without provisions and without 
guides, for wherever they appeared the people fled, and they 
found only deserted villages. 

In this terrible dilemma the soldiery, seeing the ignorance 
and incapacity of their leaders, determined, as the only means 
of preservation, to give the command, without any considera- 
tion of raidc, to the best man they could find. Their choice 
fell on a poor knight, who is only known to us by the name 
of Gilbert. This Gilbert justified the high opinion they had 
formed of him. He conducted them safely during twelve days 
through many dangers, by intricate ways, and over rivers, in 
the face of the enemy, whom he attacked and defeated. 
When he had brought the army ui safety to Satalia, he con- 
sidered his task as finished, and, resigning his command, 
resumed his private station. 

Satalia is a small seaport about three days' sail from Anti- 
cch. The journey by land is much longer. When Louis 
arrived here, he found only vessels enough to convoy liimself 
and his nobles, and he felt reluctant to abandon ids poor sot 

* The Maeandf; is a river in Asia Minor 



ILT). 1149 LOUIS VII. 115 

diers to encounter difficulties which he did not share with 
them. He was, however, persuaded to embark, taking with 
him almost all his nobles, and all the horses he had left. The 
count of Flanders remained to conduct the army by land, and 
600 Greek horsemen were procured to be their guides. These 
forsook them at the first sight of the Turks, and the French 
returned once more to Satalia, whence the count of Flanders, 
having obtained a vessel, sailed after the king. The soldiers were 
left a prey to fatigue, hunger, and the swords of the Turks, 
and all perished miserably, excepting 3000, who, to preserve 
their hves, renounced their religion and became Mohammedans. 

Louis in the mean tune arrived safely at Antioch, but his 
stay there was rendered very uncomfortable by his disagree- 
ments with the queen, which were fomented by the artifices 
of the count of Antioch, who was her uncle. 

The count endeavored to prevail on Louis to undertak»j 
some enterprise against the Turks ; but Louis resisted all his 
entreaties, and, more bent on accomplishing his pilgrimage 
than on making conquests, went to perform his devotions at 
the holy sepulcher at Jerusalem. His vow being fulfilled, he 
had now nothing to detain him, but he lingered one year in 
Palestine, as if reluctant to show himself in France a defeated 
and a dishonored man. At last the pressing instances of Se- 
gur, who informed him that his brother was fomenting dis 
turbances in France, induced him to return. 

Louis reached France in October, 1149, and found himself 
bitterly reproached by liis subjects as the destroyer of the 
flower of the French chivalry. The grievous reflection on 
him, and his own self-accusation, preyed on his mind, and to- 
tally altered his temper. His cheerfulness forsook him ; and, 
because he was displeased with himself, he also became dis- 
pleased with, and morose to others. He had lost the ardor of 
inexperienced youth, and that presumptuous courage which he 
and his flatterers had mistaken for real valor. All his misfor- 
tunes, however, failed to teach him discretion. During the 
remainder of his reign, the precipitancy of his temper often 
made liim rush unprepared into war ; and the same cause 
often drove him into an impolitic and unstable peace. 

The disagreement which had for some time subsisted be- 
tween him and his queen was another cause that soured his 
temper. At last, in 1152, they were divorced, and Louis at 
the sanje time resigned all the vast dower he had received 
with her, although he might reasonably have retained a part, 
4S the portions of the .wo daughters ho had by her. 



il6 LOUIS VII [Chap. Xl 

Eleanor very soon afterward married } oung Henry Planta- 
genet, who, by tlie death of his father, was possessed of Nor- 
mandy, Maine, and Anjou. To these dominions he now, by 
his marriage with Eleanor, added Guienne and Aquitame ; and 
not long afterward, by the death of king Stephen, he obtained 
the crown of England. 

Louis soon discovered that Henry was his superior in sense 
and talents, as well as in power, and hated him with all his 
heart. The records of the next twenty years contain little 
eke than the history of the wars between these two rival 
monarchs. During one of the short intervals of peace that 
occurred, the kings of France and England went to Torcey on 
the Loire to receive pope Alexander III., who fled to France 
for refuge from the troubles which again distracted Italy ; and 
each taking a rein of his horse's bridle, they conducted him, 
with the utmost respect and submission, to the lodgings which 
had been prepared for his reception. 

Soon after Louis had divorced Eleanor, he married Con- 
stance of Castile. She died in 1160, leaving one daughter. 
He married, a third time, Alice, sister to the earl of Cham- 
pagne ; and in 1165 he had a son, Philip, whom he surnamed 
Gift of God,* but who is better known by the name of Philip 
Augustus. 

Louis w^as glad of every occasion to show his enmity to 
Henry, and took part against him in his disputes with 
Thomas-a-Becket ; and when Henry's sons were grown up, 
he excited them to rebel against their father. Henry, the 
eldest, married Margaret, Louis's daughter by Constance. 
This prince was naturally of a proud and overbearing tfim 
per, and was encouraged in his misconduct by his father-in- 
law. 

In 1173, Henry's three sons, Henry, Geofiry, and Richard,! 
declared open war against him, and were joined by Louis, 
who entered Normandy with a strong force. He laid siege 
to Verneuil ; and after a month's siege the garrison agreed to 
surrender, if in three days no succor should arrive. Two 
days passed, and Louis thought himself sure of his prize, 
when news was brought him tliat Henry was approaching to 
the relief of the garrison. Louis sent heralds to Henry with 
pretended negotiations for peace, in hopes to delay his march 
The artifice in part succeeded ; and the third day passing 

* Diendonne. 

t GeofFry had mar.-ied Constance, the heiress of Bretagne, and was daV 
of Bretagne. Richard had been made duke of Aquitaine bj liis father 



(L.L». llbO."] LOblS Vll 117 

over without the expected succor, the men of Veruwuil sup 
rendered their to^vn. Louis, perfidious in every thing, car- 
ried away tha principal citizens in chains, contrary to tho 
articles of capitulation ; and, setting fire to the town, hroke 
up his camp and hastened toward the frontier of his OAvn ter- 
ritories, in hopes to arrive there before Henry should overtake 
him ; but he was disappointed. Henry saw, from a distance, 
the rising flames and smoke of the burning town, and pursued 
the retreating foe Avith so much activity that he soon came up 
with him, and obliged him to turn his retreat into an igno 
ftiinious flight. 

In the year 1174 Louis met with another instance of the 
ill success that commonly attends perfidy. He was besieging 
Rouen * with a numerous army ; the town was well garri 
soned and provisioned ; and the siege, which had already 
lasted some months, seemed likely to continue a long time. 
On the 10th of August, which is St. Laurence's day, Louis, 
to do honor to that saint, proclaimed a suspension of arms, 
which was joyfully accepted by the people of Rouen, more 
particularly by the younger part of the inhabitants, who, 
tired of having been so long cooped up within the walls, went 
to enjoy themselves by the banks of the river, where they 
amused themselves with a kind of tournament. 

The count of Flanders — the same, I believe, who had de- 
serted the poor soldiers at Satalia, and who had, on many 
other occasions, been the king's bad adviser — seeing that the 
citizens were wrapped in perfect security, proposed to Louis 
to take advantage of the confidence which they placed in his 
good faith, and to seize the opportunity of surprising the town. 
Louis at first rejected with scorn this wicked counsel, but at 
last he yielded to the temptation, and gave orders for the as 
sault. It happened that a priest of Rouen, who had not been 
disposed to take any part in the general merriment, went, by 
way of something to do, to the top of the high tower. in which 
hung the alarm-bell, and from thence he amused himself with 
looking down into the enemy's camp. All at once he per- 
ceived a prodigious bustle of men in arms hurrying from tent 
to tent, some of them carrying scaling ladders. He instantly 
suspected some attempt was intended against the town, and, 
without losing a moment, began to ring the alarm-bell. The 
citizens, on hearing it, left their tournament, and hastened 
into the town. The gates were shut, the walls manned, and 
^ivery thing was soon in preparation lo receive the enemy, 

On the Seine, northwest of Paris. 



118 L0UI3 VIT. LChap. XS 

who, when tiiey arrived, instead of entering a defenseless city^ 
found themselves vigorously repulsed and driven back. The 
next day Henry arrived with a numerous army of Brabancons. 
The gates were now thro^vn open, and the garrison, no longer 
obliged to act on the delensive, rushed out to attack Louis in 
his camp. He did not wait for them, but fled with the ut- 
most precipitation. He and Henry made peace with each 
other soon afterward. 

Louis, in 1179, was desirous of seeing his son Philip 
crowned, who was nov/ in his fifteenth year. The ceremony 
was to have been performed with great pomp, in the presence 
of all the great vassals of France, who were already assem- 
bled on the occasion ; but on the day before that on which 
the ceremony was to have taken place, the young prince, 
when hunting, got separated from his companions, and was 
lost in a forest. Here he wandered about all night, and was 
found in the morning by a man who came to cut wood in th(? 
forest, and who conducted him back to his terrified attend- 
ants. In consequence of the fatigue and cold he had under- 
gone, Philip fell dangerously ill, and the king, who was deepl) 
afflicted by the illness of this his only and long.desired son 
made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Thomas-a-Becket at Can- 
terbury, in the hope that his old friend, who was now canon- 
ized as a saint, would work a miracle for him, and restore his 
son to health. Louis was so very anxious to return, that he 
was absent only five days, and the fatigue and anxiety of his 
journey occasioned an attack of palsy immediately on his re- 
turn home. 

The young prince recovered, and his coronation took place 
with extraordinary splendor ; but the king was too ill to be 
present at it. He languished many months in a painful state 
between life and death. The queen and her brothers, the 
earls of Champagne and of Blois, were desirous of taking the 
reins of government in their own hands ; but the prince, even 
at that early age, displayed a proud and domineering spirit ; 
he withdrew himself from the control of his mother and his 
uncles, and sought the alliance of the count of Flanders, 
whose niece, Isabella of Hainault, he married, contrary to the 
wishes of his mother. Philip behaved in other respects so ill 
to his mother, that the king of England sought an interview 
with him, and entreated him not to sully his name by unduti- 
fulness to her. 

The count of Flanders was Philip's chief adviser, till the 
death of Louis put an end to liis inflv.ence. Philip, as soon 



Con v.] LOUIS VII. IW 

as he bwame his own master, cast off nis control, as he liad 
already done that of his own relations. 

When Louis was on his death-bed, he caused Iiis money, 
clothes, and jewels to be brought to him, and distributed 
them with his own hands among the poor. He died Sep. 
tember 18th, 1180, in the sixtieth year of his age, and tho 
forty-third of his reign. He had been married three times , 
first, to Eleanor of Guienne, by whom he had two daughters 

(I.) Mary, married the earl of Champagne. (2.) Alice 
married the earl of Blois. 

By his second wife, Constance of Castile, he had one 
daughter : 

Margaret, married, first, prince Henry of England, and 
secondly, the king of Hungary. 

By Alice of Champagne he had one son and two daugh- 
ters : 

(1.) Philip, who succeeded him. (2.) Agnes, married 
Alexis, son of the Greek emperor. (3.) Alice, betrothed to 
Richard of England, married the count of Ponthieu. 

During this reign the number of communes was increased 
and freedom continued to advance by gradual steps. 

There were now many heretics, or at least persons so call 
ed ; and of these the Albigenses seem to have been the most 
considerable 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XI. 

Richard. Pray, mamma, why were those people called 
Albigenses ? 

Mrs. Markliam. From a city in Languedoc,* called Alby, 
where they first appeared. 

Ridiard. And what difi^rence was there between them 
and other heretics ? 

Mrs. M. Their opponents accused them of entertaining 
many very strange and absurd doctrines ; but I believe they 
were greatly wronged, and that in the main they differed but 
little from the Lollards of our own country. In the next 
chapter you will hear that the pope published a crusade 
against the Albigenses, and that for many years the hitherto 
peaceful districts of the south of France became the scene of 
one of the most cruel and exterminating Avars that ever dis- 

* Lauguedoc is in tbe southera part of France. Alby is in the iiortb 
Vkcstem part of Languedoc 



50 1.0UIS Vll. lChap. XI 

praced ihe^ aniials of any country. The arbitrary tribunal ot 
the inquisition was first instituted during this crusade against 
the Albigcnses. 

Mary. It was very bad, I think, to have crusades against 
Turks and those people ; but it was a great deal worse to 
have crusades against Christians. 

Mrs. M. The religious spirit of those times was very in 
tolerant, and it was thought more phasing in the sight of God 
to persecute a heretic or a Jew than to perform any act of 
benevolence to a fellow-creature. 

George. And did these crusaders against the Albigenses 
wear crosses like the real crusaders ? 

Mrs. M. They made this distinction : that the real cru- 
saders wore their cross upon their left shoulder ; and that 
these wore it on the breast. In their ferociousness, and in 
their mistaken zeal, they were just alike. It was not only a 
meritorious act in their eyes to slaughter Turks, Jews, and 
heretics, but it was thought sinful to show them any compas 
sion. With regard to the Jews, St. Bernard is almost the 
only man who in those days had courage to advocate their 
cause. We may hope that his exhortations were not totally 
thrown away, for a custom was about this time abolished at 
Beziers,* which had long prevailed there, of celebrating Palm 
Sunday by a general attack on the Jews, or rather, I should 
say, on the Jews' houses, since it was not permitted to attack 
their persons. 

Mary. And what did they do to their houses ? 

Mrs. M. They threw stones at them, and they threw 
them in such quantities, and with such hearty good- will, that 
Bometimes they would knock the houses down; and, when 
they did, it was always a matter of great rejoicing to the 
zealous citizens of Beziers. 

Richard. But I don't see how a house could be knocked 
down in that way without the people in it being hurt or killed 

Mrs. M. If it happened that a Jew lost his life on these 
occasions, it added considerably to the satisfaction of the as- 
sailants, who did not regard it as any infringement of the law, 
Dut as a lucky accident. 

Ricltard. Pray, mamma, what made the oriflamme so 
taraous ? 

Mrs. M. The oriflamme was a banner which belonged to 
the abbey St. Denis,t and the monks pretended that it had 
been Vrought there by an angel from heaven in the time of 
I' the eastern part of Languedoc. t Near Paris 



noii\.] LA3UIS Vli. 121 

Clovis. The kings of the house of Capet, who were originally 
counts of Paris, and held a fief of the abbe of St. Denis, 
claimed the right of carrying this banner ; and at lasft Loais 
the Fat adopted it instead of the banner of St. Martin, which 
had till then been the royal banner of France. 

Mary. And did the monks pretend that St. Martin's ban- 
ner had also come from heaven ? 

Mrs. M. They did not assign it so high an origin, although 
they regarded it with great veneration as a precious relic. It 
was made of a pi ^e of St. Martin's old blue cloak. The 
oriflamme was made of red silk, and covered with golden 
flames. It was used till the time of Louis XI., after which 
it disappeared, and is no more mentioned in history. 

George. I think, mamma, that Paris must have been a 
very nasty, dirty place, when that young prince was killed by 
the pig that ran under his horse. 

Mrs. M. Paris was, in the time of Louis VI., and his son, 
♦.he worst-built and dirtiest city in France. 

Richard. I suppose that by that time it had out-grown 
the little old island in the Seine. 

Mrs. M. The walled part of the city was still confined to 
the little old island, but the opposite shores of the river were 
thickly studded with buildinss, which were all connected with 
the to wTi. Many of these were religious houses ; and the 
monks, to preserve themselves from the depredations of the 
neighboring* barons, had been obliged to inclose their premises 
with strong walls. These inclosures were called closes, and 
each bore the name of its own monastery. The spots where 
these closes were are now covered with streets, but the names 
are sufficiently preserved to enable the Parisian antiquary to 
trace their respective sites. 

Richard. I think you said that Louis VI. vv^ould not allow 
Paris and Orleans to have a commune. Was that because 
those towns were so well off" they did not require one ? 

Mrs. M. I am afraid Louis had not so good a. motive. 
The fact was, he did not choose to make his own people too 
independent. Paris stood in greater need of the protection of 
a commune than almost any other town in France, for it was 
suDject to the oppression of three separate masters. 

Richard. How was that mamma ? I should have thought 
that Paris had no other master but the king. 

Mrs. M. He, as count of Paris, was lord of only the 
v^estem half of the city ; the eastern- part belonged to the 
archbishop ; and, besides these two, the provost who v.'as a 

F 



1^2 



LOUIS Vll. [GhaP XI 



kind of governor oi sheriff, had a sort of power over the Avhole 
city, and the poor citizens were terribly off among thera all. 
Whenever the king came to Paris, his sergeants had a right 
to ransack every house, and take w^hatever they chose for the 
vse of the royal family. Louis VII., although, hke his father, 
he would not agree to their having the privilege of communes, 
yet granted the Parisians several rights and immunities. 

Riclmrd. I think the people of Italy were always in a 
tumult. How often the popes were obliged to come and tako 
refuge in France I 

Mrs. M. The schism between the cardinals and the em- 
perors lasted for a very long time. They each insisted on the 
right to elect the pope ; and the consequence was, that thero 
were frequently two popes, who were of course bitter antago- 
nists, each insisting ca his own right, and calling the othei 
anti'popi. About this time the two parties began to be dis- 
tinguished by the names of the Guelphs and the Ghibeliris. 

Mary. They were very odd names. 

Mrs. M. The first, which I believe is German for woli, 
was the war-cry of the duke of Bavaria, who fought on the 
side of the cardinals. Ghibelin was the war-cry of the em 
peror Frederic Barbarossa, and was derived from the narnt; 
of a village in Franconia, from which his family originally 
came. 

George. And which got the better ? 

Mrs. M. At this time the Guelphs got the better. Alex 
ander was acknowledged as the true pope, and he made the- 
emperor, Frederic Barbarossa, who was a most proud and 
violent-tempered man, ask his pardon, and prostrate himself 
on the ground while he set his foot on liis neck. 

George. I would have resigned my empire, if I had been 
Frederic, before I would haA^e submitted to be trampled on in 
♦hat manner. 

Mrs. M. Humiliations of that kind were not at all uncom- 
«on. Several instances are recorded of nobles who were 
obliged to make their submissions to their offended superiors^ 
by coming into their presence on their hands and knees, and 
with a saddle on their backs. 

Mary. How very strange many of the old customs were ' 

Mrs. M. And no customs, you will think, were stranger 
than some mere amusements. At a royal marriage at the 
court of Navarre, the princes and princesses were entertained 
by a spectacle which would now be thought too disgusting to 
please even a mob at a fair. This Avas a combat between 



OoNT.] LOUIS VII. 123 

two blind men and a pig. The men were armed with clubs^ 
and the pig was to be the prize of whichever could knock it 
on the head. The pig, having the use of its eyes, could gen- 
erally avoid the blows which were aimed at it, and the blind 
men, instead of striking the pig, generally hit one another , 
and in this, it seems, the chief diversion of the sport consisted, 
to the by-standers at least. If this story illustrates the man- 
ners of a court, I can tell you another which gives us a little 
insight into the manners of a monastery. 

When pope Alexander was in France, he went to pay his 
devotion in the church of St. Genevieve, at Paris. A splendid 
carpet was prepared for him to kneel on. When the pope 
had finished his devotions and left the church, his attendants 
and the monks of St. Genevieve quarreled for the possession 
of this carpet ; they fell to blows, and the uproar became so 
great that the king came in person to quell it. But his pres- 
ence was no restraint on the combatants, who continued their 
battle with such indiscriminate rage, that even the king him- 
self got his share of the blows, and was obliged to retreat. 

RicJiard. And what became of the carpet ? 

Mrs. M. The monks gained the victory, and carried it off 
m triumph. But their triumph was short ; for, when the 
pope saw how they had mauled his people, he immediately 
ordered them to be turned out of their monastery. 

Mary. Do you know, mamma, what sort of a thing the 
scrip was, which the pope sent Louis before he went to the 
Holy Land ? 

Mrs. M. It was a leathern bag, fastened by a belt round 
the waist, and was meant to contain necessaries for the jour- 
ney. The scrip was an essential part of a pilgrim's outfit. 
The rich wore it for show, and the poor for use. 

Mary. Did the pope provide scrips for all the pilgrims ? 

Mrs. M. I do not find that he bestowed any but on royal 
pilgrims. The rest received theirs, together with a staffs from 
the pastor of their own parish : and, when they returned home, 
each pilgrim was expected to place a branch of palm over the 
altar of his parish-church, in token that he had performed 
his vow. 

George. I think it very natural that men should like to go 
on crusades and pilgrimages ; but the women had better have 
stayed at home. 

Mrs. M. Indeed I think so ; but it appears that the ladies 
of the tw^elfth century were not of the same opinion. In the 
emperor Conrad's army were several German women whe 



,24 LOUIS VII [Chap. X\ 

acted the part of soldiers. They wore armor, and fought 
vaUaiitly with swords and spears. Even children were not 
exempted from the madness of the crusades. Toward the 
end of the twelfth century a crusade was undertaken in France, 
called the Child's Crusade, which was entirely conducted by 
boys. 

George. And how did it end ? Did they conquer the 
Turks ? 

Mrs. M. It ended, as might have been expected, very ill : 
and as for conquering Turks, they did not even arrive at the 
sight of any. This absurd expedition was begun by a boy (I 
do not know in what part of France), who was so fanatical 
as to believe that he had received a commission from God to 
redeem the holy sepulchre, which, he asserted, could only be 
redeemed by the innocent hands of children. The populace, 
who in all countries are easily caught by any thing new, 
flocked to the young enthusiast ; and many parents permitted 
their sons to enUst under his banner. He traversed the coun- 
try in a richly ornamented car, followed by his train of young 
crusaders, and, wherever he came, he and his companions 
were received with a kind of religious respect. At last they 
reached the coasts of the Mediterranean, and, believing that 
they would be carried to the desired port by divine guidance, 
they embarked, as it should seem, in iil-appointed vessels. 
for the history ends Ify sf^ying tbai; i\\fy all perished in th« 
waves. 



CHAPTER XII. 

FHtllP II., SURNAMED AUGUSTUS. 

lYears after Christ, 1180-1223] 




The Louvre in 1360. 

The reign of tliis king forms one of the most remarkable 
eras in the history of the French monarchy. Till this time 
the French nation was a sort of confederation of princes, 
governed by a feudal chief; but Philip soon made himself an 
absolute monarch. He had early shown an impatience of 
control, and a determination to rule alone ; and it is said 
of him, that, without being a great man, he yet performed 
many great actions. In fact, he was endowed with no fine 
qualities or extraordinary talents ; he was crafty and am- 
bitious, and his success was chiefly owing to the cunning 
with which he laid his plans, and his steady perseverance in 
executing them. His was not the ambition of a hero aspiring 
after glory, but the long-sighted, calculating spirit of a man 
eager for gain. But although artful and perfidious in kia 
dealings with rival princes, it is but right to say that he ' 
treated his subjects with some show of justice and considera- 
tion ; a very rare virtue in those days. 

Philip was the first king of France who could be styled a 
poUtician. He had great confidence in his own powers, and 
was impatient for an opportunity of trying his strength against 
the wise and politic king of England. Many cases of dis- 
pute soon arose between them. Henry refused to restore the 
Jnwer of Margaret, his eldest son's widow, which Philip, ad 



126 FHlhlP II LChap. XI. 

her brother, had a right to expect. Henry di^layed the mar- 
riage of his son llichard with Alice, Philip's youngest sister ; 
and when his son Geoffry died in 1186, he assumed a right 
to govern Bretagne in the name of Arthur, Geoffry's posthu- 
mous child. Many conferences were held between the t-;ro 
monarchs on the subject of these differences. Philip was 
anxious for war ; but Henry, whose interest it was to pre- 
serve peace, always found means to avoid it. These con- 
ferences were commonly held under an elm-tree near Gisors, 
which grew so exactly on the confines of France and Nor 
mandy, that the two kings could meet beneath its branches, 
each standing on his own territory. At last Philip, in a 
passion at fmding that Henry was neither to be intimidated 
nor cajoled, cut dowir the elm, declaring that they should 
never meet again under its shade. 

Philip, finding he could not succeed in bending Henry to 
his wishes, tried his artifices on his sons, and he found no 
difficulty in prevailing on them to rebel against their father. 
He and prince Richard (now the king of England's eldest 
surviving son), the more to vex Henry, made a great parade 
of their friendship. They would live in the same tent, would 
Bleep in the same bed, and drink out of the same cup ; but 
this their great friendship was soon, as you will hear, turned 
into the most deadly hatred. 

On the death of Henry, in 1189, llichard succeeded to the 
throne of England, and he and Philip agreed to go together 
on a crusade. They were to go by sea, and would take no 
pilgrims with them, but only soldiers ; so that this was the 
most effective host which had yet been sent, out of Europe. 
But, unluckily, the two kings determined to spend the Mdnter 
at Messina, and this part of the plan proved fatal to the 
expedition. Their ill-cemented friendship had time to cool, 
and th-e winter was passed in mutual heart-burnings. 

When spring came, Pliilip hastened to Acre, wliich had 
been taken from the Christians by Saladin the Great, the 
Bultan of Egypt, and which the Christians were now endeav 
oring, with all their collected forces, to win back. Richard 
did not arrive till the month of June, having been detained 
first by liis marriage with Berengaria of Navarre, and, lastly, 
by the conquest of Cyprus. 

The mutual animosity of Philip and Richard, which had 
begun in Sicily, was strengthened at Acre. The English 
and French, uistead of pressing the siege, thought only of 
skirmishing before the walls, to exhibit to each other tlieii 



/V.D. 1192.] PHILIP II. lir; 

liorsemanshiy and dexterity. But at length the news of 
Saladin's approach united them in the common cause, and 
they exerted themselves with so much vigor that the to\vi» 
was taken. 

Richard, on ihvi occasion, olrtalneu so much praise for \m 
valor, that PhiLp's jealous heart could not brook it ; and, on 
the plea of ill-health, he departed for Europe, having first 
taken a solemn oath that he would make no attack on the 
territories of Hichard during his absence. He left behmd 
him ten thousand men, under the command of the duke of 
Burgundy. But these men were a hinderance rather than 
an assistance to Richard, for the duke of Burgundy had 
received orders from Philip to thwart the English king on 
all occasions. 

In the mean time Philip arrived in Italy, and went to pay 
his devotions at Rome, where he endeavored to prevail with 
pope Celestin III. to absolve him of his oaths to Richard 
But Celestin would not sanction such perfidiousness. 

Philip reached France in 1192, and had there the ad 
ditional mortification of finding that Richard was enthusi 
astically admired throughout Europe, and regarded as the 
champion of Christendom. In the following year, however, 
lie had the satisfaction, such as it was, of hearing that hi? 
rival was taken prisoner in Germany, on his return from 
Palestine, and confined in one of the emperor's castles. Philip 
now lost no time in attacking Normandy, and in stirring up 
John, Richard's brother, to seize on England. But in neither 
of these attempts did he succeed. Both English and Normans 
were faithful to their king, whose faults they forgot in admi- 
ration of his courage, and in natural pity for his misfortunes. 
At last Richard obtained his freedom, and I think you knov*' 
that as soon as the neAvs of this event v/as carried to France, 
Philip sent off" a scroll to John, in which he told him " to 
take care of himself for the devil was unchained." 

From the time of Richard's release from captivity till his 
death, in 11.99, an almost perpetual war was produced by the 
bitter hatred of the two kings to each other. In a battle near 
Vendome,* mil 94, Philip was defeated with the loss of all 
liis money and camp equipage, and all the records belonging 
to the crown. This disaster determined Philip to erect a 
bwilding at Paris, in which the royal archives should in future 
It deposited. 

Philip's first wife, Isabella of Hainault, died in 1191, and 

* Vendom? is Bouthwest of Paris, halfway to tlie sea. 



128 PHILIP n. [Chap. XH 

in 1193 he married Ingeberge, a princess of Denmark, U. 
whom he took so great a dislike, that he shut her up in a 
convent, and, obtaining a divorce, married Maria, daughter 
of the duke of Dalmatia. The pope. Innocent III., took the 
part of Ingeberge, and laid the kingdom under an interdict, 
which lasted three years. At the end of that time Philip 
found himself obliged to submit. He divorced Maria, and 
brought Ingeberge on a pillion behind him from the convent 
where she resided to the pope's legate ; then, having made 
this public show of reconciliation, he sent her back to her 
convent. But in the latter part of his life, Maria being dead, 
Philip sent for Ingeberge to court, and lived with her to all 
appearance very happily. 

Richard of England died in 1199, and his brother John 
seized on his dominions, to the exclusion of his elder brother's 
son, Arthur of Bretagne. 

In 1200, Philip fri'l -Tohn made a treatv. by which Philip 
obtained possession of Issoudun, Gracay, and some other places, 
as the dower of Blanch of Castile, who was John's niece, on 
her marriage with Louis, Philip's eldest son. 

Yomig Arthur of Bretagne claimed the assistance of Philip 
against the usui^ations of his uncle, and Philip sometimes 
took up his cause and sometimes abandoned it, as he thought 
best suited his own interests. At last this unfortunate prince 
fell into the hands of his cruel uncle, who put him to (i-jath. 

Arthur's mother, Constance, had been married again to 
Guy de Tours, a gentleman of Poitou.* By him 'jhe had 
one child, Alice, whom, on the death of Arthur, the Bretons 
chose to be their sovereign Guy de Tours was appointed 
regent, and took on himself the title of duke of Breidgne. 

In the mean time Philip, as suzeraiu, had cited John to 
appear at Paris, to answer for the murder of Arthur. John 
did not obey this summons ; he was, in consequence, pro- 
nounced guilty of murder and felony, and all the lands ho 
held in fief were declared forfeited. Philip, who had long 
get his heart on Normandy, lost no time in enforcing this sen- 
tence. He laid siege to Chateau Gaillard,t the hulwark of 
Normandy, which he took March 6, 1204, after a siege of 
many months. The rest of Normandy proved an easy ecu 
quest. John now seemed to be stupefied, and instead oi 
taking any active measures for the preservation of his terri 
tories, ahandoned himself to frivolous amusements ; and th^ 

* A province a little south of Bretagne. 
t See pap-e 62 for a view of this castle. 



A.D. 1213.] PHILIP ±T. 120 

Normans could not iight with any vigor unt\er so despicable 
a sovereign. 

John was the last of eleven dukes who had governed Nor- 
mandy during a period of 293 years. Jersey and Guernsey,* 
and some other smaller islands, are the only relics of that 
ancient dukedom which remain in the possession of the crown i 
of England. 

Philip soon became master also of Maine, Touraine, and 
Anjou ;t and in 1213 he found himself encouraged by the 
English, who were completely disgusted with John, to at- 
tempt the conquest of England. Pope Innocent III. sanc- 
tioned the enterprise, and Philip assembled an army and a 
fleet on the coasts of Picardy, and was on the point of hoist 
ing sail, when he received a message from cardinal Pandolf 
the pope's legate in England, to say that John had submitted 
himself to the holy see, and was now under the protection of 
the pope ; and that, consequently, the king of France must 
resign his intended invasion. This peremptory command en- 
raged Philip extremely, but nevertheless he did not choose to 
disobey it. He therefore vented his rage on the earl of Flan- 
ders, who had previously incurred his displeasure by refusing 
to lend his aid to the intended invasion of England, which he 
regarded as an unjustifiable breach of the law of nations. 
Philip marched into Flanders,^ burning and destroying every 
thing that came in his way. He was soon, however, recalled, 
by hearing that the English ships had sailed from their ports, 
and destroyed his fleet ; and the only fruit of this cruel attack 
on Flanders was a rancorous hatred between the Flemings 
and the French, that long subsisted. 

The count of Flanders was now Philip's declared enemy, 
and joined with the emperor Otho IV., and with the king of 
England, in a confederacy against him. 

On August 27, 1214, Philip met his enemies with an army 
of 50,000 men, at Bouvines, near Tournay.§ The confede- 
rate army, which was commanded by the emperor, was still 
more numerous ; but the superior skill and vigilance of Philip 
gained him a decided victory. William, of Bretagne, who 
w^as Philip's chaplain, was present at this battle, of which he 
has given us a circumstantial account ; and I think you will 
not dislike to hear some passages from it. The French army 

* "West of Normandy, not far from the coast. 

t Provinces lying south of Normandy. 

} Flanders lies northeast of France, on tne s«a. 

$ Tournay is in Belgium, beyond the confines of the mso. 



laj THILiP II. (CHAP. Xll 

had passed the bridge of Bouvines, and Otho thought this a 
favorable moment for commencing the attack. " When 
Pliilip was informed that the emperor was in movement, he, 
fatigued by the length of the way and the weight of his ar- 
mor, was resting under the shade of an ash-tree, which grew 
near the church. At this news he rose up and went into the 
church, and addressing a short prayer to God, he went out, 
took up his arms, and with a joyous face, as if he had been 
going to a wedding, remounted his horse. In crossing the 
field, we heard the cry, ' to arms ! to arms !' the trumpets 
resounded, and the squadrons which had already passed the 
bridge returned. We called for the banner of St. Denis, but 
as it was not at hand we would not wait for it. The enemy 
seeing, to their surprise, that the king had faced them, turned 
to a higher ground on the right ; they had their backs to the 
north, and the sun, which that day shone brighter than usual, 
was in their faces. The combat was hot and . impetuous. 
The German cavalry, being warlike and very audacious, 
pushed close to the king. His attendants defended him ; but 
they, with their Teutonic fury, would have only the king. In 
the mean time the German infantry came up, and with their 
little lances and their hooks dragged the king from his horse, 
and he would have been killed, had not Divine Providence 
preserved him. His standard-bearer waved the banner in 
token of distress, which brought some knights to the rescue, 
and the king, though wounded, sprang on his feet and re- 
mounted his horse. The emperor also encountered equal 
danger, for a French knight, Pierre Mauvoisin, seized his 
horse by the bridle, while another attempted to stab the em- 
peror in the throat ; but he, as is the manner of knights in 
our days, was clad in such thick armor, that it could not be 
penetrated. The Frenchman aimed another stroke, which 
the emperor's horse in rearing received in his eye. The 
animal, mad with pain, turned short round, and bearing his 
master a few paces off, dropped down dead. The emperor 
mounted another horse, and having thus shown us his back, 
ho left us for a trop ly of our victory his imperial eagle, and 
the car on which it was momated. The kmg said to his 
people, ' We shall see his face no more this day ;' and in 
fact he would no longer oppose himself to the valor of our 
knights." 

The bishop of Beauvais was one of the combatants, and 
fought with a mace, which was deemed a more suitiblc 
weapon far a priest than a sword or lance. 



A.U. 1216-.J FHILIP IT. 131 

Philip took many prisoners in this important battle, ani 
among them the counts of Flanders and of Boulogne. The 
former was confined, in the tower of the Louvre, which was 
at that time without the walls of Paris. The count of 
Boulogne had a large log of wood fastened by a chain abovit 
his waist, and was shut up in the tower of Piron. This vie 
tory was celebrated at Paris with, transports of joy by a peo- 
ple who have at all periods of their history made glory their 
idol. 

While these things were passing in the north, of France, 
the southern provinces were desolated by a war against the 
Albigenses, which began about the year 1209, and was car 
ried on with a most disgraceful ferocity. 

Among the most conspicuous of the suficrers in this war 
were Raymond, count of Toulouse, and his nephew, the vis- 
count of Beziers. Among the most savage of their perse- 
cutors was Simon de Montford, who in 1215 had the sover- 
eignty conferred on him of all the country conquered from 
the Albigenses. De Montford was killed at the siege of 
Toulouse in 1218. After liis death the war subsided for a 
time, though it was often renewed at different periods. The 
sect, though persecuted, was never extinguished, and many 
of the French Protestants, who are still numerous in the 
southern provinces, are descendants of these Albigenses, whose 
memory and whose sufferings are still held in veneration. 

In 121G, prince Louis was invited by some English barons 
to claim the throne of England, in right of Blanch his wife. 
Philip, not choosing to get into any dispute with the pope, 
who still declared John to be under his protection, afTected to 
be displeased with his son for acceding to the wishes of the 
English nobles. He nevertheless furnished him with a suf- 
ficient army for the enterprise, and Louis landed in England 
in the month of June, and was received with great appear- 
ance of cordiality by the inhabitants of London. But the 
death of John in the following October totally changed the 
aspect of affairs. The barons, now that the object of their 
dislike and dread could no longer alarm them, repented that 
they had invited into their country a Jjreigner, and the son 
of their enemy. Deserting Louis, they swore allegiance to 
the young Henry, their late king's son. As a last efTort, Louis 
sent his army into the north, but on May ] 9, 1217, it was de- 
feated in a bloody battle at Lincoln. Aft *r that he gave up 
the enterprise, and returned to France. 

The conclusion of this long reign of Philip is marked bji 



132 PHILIP 11. LCiiAP. All 

the seitvng out of another crusade. This annament waa 
particularly directed against the sultan of Egypt. It attack- 
ed and took Damietta. In the town were found immense 
riches ; but these the crusaders had little time to enjoy 
Part of the army was destroyed by the plague, which rager' 
in Damietta ; and a part, having set forth to besiege Cairo 
was prevented by an inundation of the Nile from either ad- 
vancing or being able to retreat. In this extremity they 
were glad to accept the conditions offered them by the sultan, 
of giving up Damietta, and returning to Europe. Thus ended 
what is called the fifth crusade. 

In 1223 Philip, finding his health decline, set about ar- 
ranging his worldly affairs ; and feehng some remorse at the 
.nanner iir which he had amassed his treasures, he appropri- 
ated a part of them to the express purpose of repaying, after 
his death, those persons whose money he had unjustly taken 
in his lifetime. 

He died July 14, 1223, in the fifty-eighth year of his age, 
and the forty-fourth of his reign. By his first wife, Isabella 
of Hainault, he had only one child : 

Louis, who succeeded him. 

By Maria of Dalmatia he had a son and a daughter. The 
Bon was — 

Philip, count of Boulogne. The daughter, Maria, married 
first the count of Namur, and secondly the duke of Brabant. 

By Ingeberge, who survived him, he had no children. 

In the early part of his reign, Philip banished the Jews 
from his dominions, and enriched his coffers with their spoil 
He afterward enriched himself again at their expense, by al 
lowing them to purchase permissions to return. 

He was the first king of France who maintained a standing 
army. All the former kings had nothing to depend on except 
the uncertain assistance of their vassals. Also, under the plea 
of protecting himself from assassination, Philip was constantly 
attended by a troop of young men, who were called Ribauds. 
They were armed with maces, and guarded him night and 
day. The captain of this band had the title of King of the 
Hibauds, and no one was suffered to enter the pa\ace but 
those he thought fit. After a time he was also made execu- 
tioner. 

During this reign the leprosy spread to an alarming degree, 
and lazar-housis were built in every town for the reception 
of persons afflicted with that loathsome and infectious di* 
order 



Co^v.J PHILIP II. 133 

CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XII. 

Mary. Pray, mamma, why were these houses called lazax- 
iv)uses '.' 

Mrs. Markham. They were so named from Lazarus, of 
whom we read in our Saviour's parable. The leprosy is sup- 
posed to have been brought from the east into Europe by the 
crusaders. 

Riclmrd. I think all the crusades were first begim by the 
French. 

Mrs. M. The spirit of crusading seemed peculiarly adapted 
to suit the temper of that restless people. The French exulted 
in considering themselves as the very soul of the crusades. 
The four principalities of the Christians in the east, Jerusa- 
lem, Antioch, Tripoli, and Edessa, were all founded and gov- 
erned by Frenchmen. 

George. I hope, mamma, there is no harm in saying thai 
I like Saladin, although he was a Mussulman, better than all 
the crusaders put together. 

Mrs. M. There is no harm in extolling merit wherever we 
find it. Saladin's was in reality a very fine sharacter. He 
had been brought up in all the efleminate customs of the east, 
and in his youth was devoted to luxury and pleasure ; but no 
sooner did he become animated by ambition and a love of glo- 
ry, than he cast off his former habits of self-indulgence, and 
showed himself a pattern of simplicity and abstemiousness. 
The Latins would have done well to have followed the exani 
pie he set them of clemency, and of moderation in victory ; 
an example that forms a mortifying contrast to their own 
brutal and ferocious cruelty. To his own people Saladin was 
liberal and generous. He expended none of the great riches 
he acquired by his conquests upon himself, but bestowed the 
whole in works of public utility, and in acts of munificence to 
individuals ; and v/hen he died, one solitary piece of gold, and 
about forty pieces of silver, were all that was found in his 
treasury. 

Ridiard. How did the Christians get on in Palestine after 
Richard Cceur de Lion left them ? 

Mrs. M. Their loss in E-ichard was in some measure 
counterbalanced by the death of Saladin, who died in 1193 ; 
and thus they became freed from their most powerful a(Wer- 
sary. The Turks, also, after the loss of their sultan, were so 
incessantly occupied by quarrels among themselves, that thcv 
had little time lor molesting the Christians. 



.Mi PHILIP II [Chap. Xli 

Mm-y. I suppose, then, that the Latins, as I thiak you 
laid they were called, could now enjoj/ peace and quiet- 
aess. 

Mrs. M. They were a people to whom peace and quiet- 
ness was no enjoyment ; and no sooner did they obtain a res- 
pite from, the Turks than they turned their arms against the 
Greeks. Constantinople was at that time rent in factions. 
The emperor, Isaac, had been deposed by his brother Alexia 
[II., who, according to a shocking custom in the east, put out 
his eyes. The poor blind Isaac had also a son called Alexis, 
who vowed vengeance against his uncle, and the cit}"^ was in 
a state of the greatest uproar. In the midst of these distract 
mg scenes, the Latins appeared before the city with a large 
fleet of galleys, which had been sent by the Venetian republic. 
The entrance to the port was protected by a very strong chain, 
which reached across the harbor ; but this chain was severed 
by an enormous pair of shears, with which one of the galleys 
was armed, and the whole fleet entered the harbor. The tu- 
mult in the town was so great, and the contending parties so 
entirely occupied with each other, that there was but one per 
son, Theodore Lascaris, who made any attempt to defend the 
city from the common enemy. But he, soon perceiving that 
his attempts were useless, abandoned the city, leaving the 
French and Venetians absolute masters of it. 

The Latins elected Baldwin, earl of Flanders, to be emperor 
of Constantinople. He reigned about three years, at the end 
of which time he fell into the hands of the Bulgarians, who, 
it is supposed, put him to a cruel death, but his fate was never 
precisely ascertained. 

George. Then I suppose there was an end of this Latiii 
empire of Constantinople. 

ivhs. M. It lasted yet a little while longer. Baldwin had 
only two daughters, the eldest of whom inherited Flanders. 
Constantinople was bestowed on his brother Henry, a brava 
and good man, who defended and governed his little empire 
(which did not, however, extend beyond the walls of the city) 
with great spirit and wisdom. He died in 1216. Peter da 
Courtenai was appointed to succeed him, but was taken pris- 
oner on his road to Constantinople, and never enjoyed his im- 
perial dignity. Peter's son, Robert, was chosen in his place, 
and the throne remained in the family of the Courtenais tiU 
the year 1261, at which time Baldwin II., grandson of Peter, 
was reduced to the greatest distress, surrounded on all sides 
hy powerful enemies, and m ithout any resources or means of 



Con v.] PHILIP II. 135 

defense. In this extremity lie came to Europe, to solicit aia. 
He brought some jewels and relics with him, which he pawned 
to the Venetians ; but at last his distress became so great, that 
he even pawned his own son to them, for money to defray hia 
traveling expenses. 

George. I don't think there is a beggar in the country 
Aiirho would do such a thing as that I 

Mrs. M. This unfortunate monarch was reduced to many 
strange necessities, and spent the remainder of his hfe in wan- 
dering over France and England, soliciting charity, while the 
Greeks, under Michael Palseologus, once more established 
themselves in Constantinople. 

Ricliard. Pray, mamma, who was the earl of Flanders 
who was taken prisoner at the battle of Bouvines ? 

Mis. M. He was a brother of the king of Portugal, and 
became earl of Flanders in consequence of his marriage with 
Jane, the first Baldwin's eldest daughter and heiress. Jane 
was a very wicked, hard-hearted woman, and suffered her 
husband to remain a prisoner many years, because she refused 
to pay his ransom. 

Mary. What a; set of people they were in these times 
pawning their sons, and refusing to pay their husbands' ran- 
doms I 

Mrs. M. The Flemings were as indignant as you can be, 
Mary, at Jane's conduct, and they were very glad when they 
thought they had found an opportimity of depriving her of her 
power. The story is a singular one, and I will tell it you at 
length. In 1224, about twenty years after the time when 
Baldwin, Jane's father, had been supposed to have been put 
to dea,th by the Bulgarians, a man made his appearance in 
Flanders, who asserted himself to be the emperor. The ac- 
count he gave of himself, and of the escape from captivity, 
had so great an air of probability, that the Flemings, by whom 
Baldwin had been as much beloved as his daughter was dis- 
liked, lent a willing ear to his story. All who remembered 
the late earl saw, or fancied they saw, in this man, a striking 
resemblance to him, allowing for the changes which time and 
suffering would necessarily occasion in his appearance. The 
countess, finding the people ready to assert his claims, fled to 
Paris, and put herself under the protection of the king. Louia 
VIII. (in whose reign this took place) prevailed on the sup- 
posed earl to come to Peronne, where he and the pope's legato 
appeared as judges to decide the cause between him and tJie 
eouu'ess ; she hav ng declared the man to be an impostor, of 



I3b PHILIP II. CChap. XU 

tiie name of Bernard de Rays, who bore a sms;ular resem- 
blance to her father. 

The man made very pertinent /eplies to the interrogatories! 
put to him, excepting to the three last ; but as he was unable 
to answer these, the king pronounced him an impostor. Louis 
havmg promised him a safe conduct through his dominions, 
he was suffered to depart mimolested. Jane, however, soon 
contrived to get him into her hands, and had him put to death 
on a scaffbrd, after having first inflicted upon him many need- 
Jess tortures. 

Gem'ge. What were the three questions that he could not 
answer ? 

Mrs. M. They were the following : — 

In what place he had done fealty to king Philip ? 

Where and by whom he had been knighted ? 

And the place and the day on wliich he had married his 
countess, Maria of Champagne ? 

Ricliard. Ah, mamma ! I fear he was an imposter ; the 
real earl would certainly have been able to answer such ques- 
tions as these. 

Mrs. M. There were, nevertheless, many persons who still 
continued to believe in his identity, and who said, in his ex- 
cuse, that Louis was so very desirous to have him proved an 
impostor, that, on the first appearance of hesitation in his 
answers, he did not give him time to recollect himself; and 
that the proceedings were hurried over in such a manner as 
effectually to prevent him, even if he really was the earl, 
from clearing up any difficulties. However that might be, 
great doubt still remains on this affair. The Flemings were 
at the time fully persuaded of the reahty of the story the man 
told, and regarded Jane in abhorrence as the murderer of her 
father. To put a stop to these accusations, the countess sent 
persons into Bulgaria to ascertain the circumstances of her 
father's death, and to bring proofs of it that would satisfy the 
populace. They returned in due time, and the populace were 
satisfied. 

Ricliard. Wlay, what proofs did they bring ? 

Mrs. M. They said that they had not only found the, 
earl's grave, but that a miraculous light en/anated from it; 
and there was no disputing evidence hke that. 

George. These Flemings would believe any thing I 

RicJiard. I should now like to talk a little about king 
Philip Augustus. Do you know, mamma, that of all thr 
kings we have yet come to, T dislike him the most ? 



CoNV.] PHILIP II. i;i7 

Mrs. M. He is, however, a great favorite with the French, 
because he raise 1 the dignity of the crown, and because he did 
more than any o^.her king had done hefore for the emhelUsh- 
ment and improvement of Paris. 

George. I am sure, mamma, from what you told us yester- 
day, it was not before it was wanted. 

Mrs. M. His first great improvement was to pave the 
streets, and the circumstance which led to his making this 
improvement is thus quaintly told by an old historian. "The 
king, one day walking about in his royal palace, went to the 
window to divert his thoughts by watching the course of the 
river. Wagons drawn by horses were traversing the city, and 
by throwing up the mud, made such an intolerable stench that 
the king could not endure it. He at that moment conceived 
a difficult but necessary project — a project which none of his 
predecessors had dared to execute, because of its extreme 
difficulty and expense ; and this was the paving of the 
streets." The two principal streets (and perhaps others) 
were, m consequence, paved with large flat stones. The 
accumulation of soil has since been so great that this original 
pavement, which is still to be found, is seven or eight feet 
below the present surface. The next great work which thi.s 
king undertook "was to inclose the buildings, closes, gardens, 
and other cultivated lands that bordered the two banks of the 
Seine, with a strong wall, flanked with round towers. This 
was a great midertaking, and was between twenty and thirty 
years in completing ; but when finished, Paris, though still 
small, compared with the present city, was nearly four times 
its original size. The palace of the Louvre, Avhich now 
etands in the heart of Paris, was built by Philip as a country 
residence, on the outside of the new wall. It was a heavy, 
gloomy building, and, according to the fashion of tiie times, it 
was intended both for a palace and a prison. 

Philip built a new church on the site of the old cathedral 
of Notre Dame. He also inclosed the park at Vincennes on 
the outskirts of Paris ; and our king Henry II. supplied him 
Avith deer to stock it with. Among other things, Philip built 
a bazaar for the convenience of the merchants, who were thus 
enabled, as the old historians tell us, to expose their goods for 
sale without the hazard of their being stolen by " the gentle- 
men." But the most important benefit which Philip conferred 
on Paris was an aqueduct which he caused to be constructed 
for the purpose of supplying the city with water 



,a8 pyiLir II, [CuAP. xn 

George. I must own the Parisians, at least, are justified in 
tiieir admiration of Philip. 

Mrs. M. It is singular that, among all these improve- 
ments, th.3 lanp: did not add that of another bridge. Thei'e 
was at this time no communication between the newly 
inclosed .parts of Paris on both sides of the river, except 
tlirough the island, by means of the two old bridges of the 
Great and tlie Little Chatelet. 

Mary. How many bridges are there now ? 

Mrs. M. There are sixteen, if y\'e include a foot-bridg*., 
and a Avooden one in the old part of the town. 

RicJuird. How did learning thrive in this reign ? 

Mrs. M. It kept gradually gaining ground. Philip gave 
it every encouragement, and built several schools ; but his 
own particular studies could hardly come under the title of 
learning. He was passionately fond of romances, and it is to 
his taste for that kind of reading that we owe all the mar- 
velous histories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round 
Table, and of Charlemagne and his Paladins, which, with 
many other of the old romances, were written in this reign. 
It is diverting to see how exactly Arthur, Charlemagne, 
Alexander the Great, and all the rest of the heroes in these 
romances, are made to speak and act like knights of the 
thirteenth century ; and this reminds me, that the measure 
of verse which is used by the French in their serious noetrv. 
and is carainonly called by theni the Alexandrine measure, 
has its Hame from a romance of the history r.f Alexander, 
which was written in that measure by a French poet of the 
time of Philip Au^'jitu.* 



CHAPTER XIII. 

LOUIS VIII., SUaNAMED THE LION. 
fYears after Christ, 1223—1226 1 




TniBAUD, Count of Chahpaqne. 

liC-xcs was ill his thirty-sixth year when his father died, 
tlis mother, Isabella of Hainault, was descended from Ermen* 
garde, one of the daughters of Charles, duke of Lorraine, who, 
if you remember, disputed the crown with Hugh Capet, and 
who was the last of the Carlovingian family who laid claim 
to the throne of France. Louis thus united in his person the 
two houses of Charlemagne and Capet. It was perhaps this 
circumstance that made Philip waive the usual ceremony of 
having Louis crovnied in his own lifetime, a custom which 
seems to have been adopted by the earlier kings of the house 
of Capet, to secure to their sons a peaceable succession. 

The surname of Lion might be supposed, if one did not 
recoUect the flattery of courtiers, to have been given to this 
king in derision, for he was feeble both in \)ody and in mind. 
An old va-iter says of hiri, that "He was neither to be noted 
fhr vices, nor commended for virtues ; and his greatest fame 



I4U LOUIS VIIT. L<-;hap. XUl 

consisted in that he was son to an excellent lather, and fathei 
to an excellent son." 

Louis and his queen, Blanch, were crowned at E-heirns • 
and the Parisians, who seem always to have had a greal 
reUsh for all sorts of triumphant display, celebrated thia 
event with great demonstrations of joy. They hung car])eta 
from their windows, and decorated their pubhc buildings with 
garlands of flowers : tables covered with provisions were 
placed in the streets at which the poor were entertained, 
while minstrels and troubadours paraded the city singing the 
praises of the new king. 

Henry HI. of England was summoned as a vassal of 
France to attend at the coronation. Instead of obeying the 
summons, he sent to demand the restitution of the provinces 
which Philip had taken from his father. This was quite 
enough to cause a war. Louis took several of the towns be- 
longing to the king of England on the banks of the Garonne,* 
and obliged Savary de Mauleon, who commanded for Henry, 
to retire to Rochelle,t where he waited for some time in ex- 
pectation of receiving succor from England, particularly 
money, of which he stood in great need. At length some 
heavy chests arrived. He expected these to be filled with 
the promised gold ; but when they were opened they were 
found to contain only pieces of old iron and rubbish. Indig- 
nant at this deception, Savary left the service of Henry, and 
went over to the French king. This, at least, is the account 
usually given of this affair, though the story seems more 
probably to have been an invention of Savary to justify his 
desertion to the enemy. 

Only Gascony and Bordeaux now remained to the English 
of all their former great possessions in France ; and of these 
Louis would probably have made himself master if he had 
not been drawn away by stronger inducements to engage in 
the war against the Albigenses. 

To this war he had been excited by the exhortations of pope 
Honorius HI., who called upon ail the prelates and nobles of 
France to take upon them the cross, and " cleanse" the land 
of heretics. Louis's first enterprise in this war was the siege 
of Avignon. $ Avignon was in that part of the ancient king 
dom of Aries which had fallen to the share of the emperor of 
Germany, but the count of Toulouse had long been considered 

* The Garonne is in the southwestern part of France. 

t Eochelle, or La llochelle, is nortk of the mouth of the Garonne. 

t Near the mouth of the Rhone. 



A.D. 1226 ] LOUIS VIII I41 

as its more immediate lord. When the besieging atmy ap- 
proached, and demanded a passage through the city, the eiti« 
zens, unwilhng to admit such an undiscipHned and lawless 
body of men within their walls, offered to furnish them with 
orovisions and a safe passage across the Rhone, provided they 
would pass on without entering the town. This Louis con- 
sidered as a great affront, and immediately gave orders for an 
assault. The citizens defended themselves to the utmost, but 
were at last obliged to capitulate, and Louis entered the city 
as victor. Fortunately for the inhabitants, the emperor re- 
garded them as under his protection ; and Louis, unwilling 
to offend him, kept the terms of capitulation with more hon 
esty than it was customary to maintain toward heretics 
During the siege of Avignon the citizens had undergone great 
hardships and privations, but the sufferings of the besiegers 
were still more severe. The weather was intensely hot, and 
owing to the scarcity of fodder, a prodigious number of horses 
died, the smell of whose dead bodies occasioned a fever, which, 
in the course of the siege, carried off' 20,000 men. The king 
himself fell ill, and was incapable of pursuing his farther pro- 
jects. He was supposed to have been poisoned by Thibaud, 
count of Champagne, who had a short time before quitted the 
army on some supposed affront ; but it is more probable that 
his illness was the prevailing disorder which raged among the 
troops. He bestowed the command of the army, which he 
was himself obliged to relinquish, on the lord of Beaujeu, and 
set out on his return to Paris. On his arrival at the castle 
of Montpensier, in Auvergne, he found himself unable to pro- 
ceed farther, and assembling round his bed-side the nobles who 
had accompanied him, he made them swear that they would 
crown his eldest son. He appointed his queen, Blanch, regent 
of the kingdom during his son's minority : and very soon after 
he had settled these things he breathed his last. He died 
in October, 1226, in the thirty-ninth year of his age. He 
reigned little more than three years. His children were, 

(1.) Louis, who succeeded him. (2.) Robert, count of Ar- 
tois. (3.) Alfonso, count of Poitou. (4.) Charles, count of 
Anjou. (5.) John. (6.) Isabella, a nun. 

There were at this period frequent scarcities, which almost 
amounted to famine ; and wheat was sometimes sold at ax 
limes its usual price. 



142 LOUIS VIII. [Chap. Xlir 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XIII. 

Hichard. I have just been thinking that you have not 
told us much about Jersey and Guernsey, and the rest of 
those little islands, vi^hich are the only scraps and shreds left 
of the duchy of Normandy. 

Mrs. Markham. I oAvn it, my dear, and the best amends 
I can make for it is, to give you some account of them now. 
Jersey, the largest, in w^hich is the seat of government, is a 
pretty island, of about twelve miles long and six broad. It is 
surrounded by a wall of rocky coast, but the interior is fertile 
and pleasant. The inclosures are small, and so well sur 
rounded by hedge-row trees as to give the island the appear- 
ance, at a distance, of an entire wood. 

George. Are they fine timber trees ? 

Mrs. M. No, I believe they are principally apple and pear 
trees. Guernsey is more diversified than Jersey, and veiy 
picturesque. Sark and Alderney are very small islands, being 
not more than two miles across. They are nevertheless fertile 
and inhabited, and produce, I need not tell you, a breed of 
small cattle, which is very much prized in England. These 
islands are governed by the old ducal laws of Normandy. 
Our Queen, however, sends a governor, whose usual residence 
is at St. Holier ; and in war-time there is an EngUsh garrison 
The gentry in these islands all speak English, but Norman 
French is still the language of the common people. All law 
business is carried on in this language, as is also the service 
in most of the churches. 

Mary. If I went there I should almost suppose myself in 
France. 

Mis. M. The inhabitants would be very rauch offended 
with you if you did. For I understand that notwithstanding 
their language, customs, and manners bear so strong a resem- 
blance to the French, they pique themselves extremely on 
being English subjects. You could not offend them more than 
by comparing them to Frenchmen. 

George. It seems very odd to me that the French never 
tried to get these islands away from us ; for they look on the 
map as if they ought to belong to France much more than to 
England. 

Mrs. M. For a great length of time the kings of France 
seem to have regarded these islands as not worth having ; bul 



Ooxvv.] LOUIS Vlir: J43 

m 1779 a fon e of 5000 men was fitted out by tne. French 
government, and sent in flat-bottomed boats to the attack of 
Jersey ; but the island was vigorously defended by its militia, 
and the French were compelled to retire. In 1781, another 
expedition was sent under the command of the baron de RuUe- 
court, an arrogant, rash man, who made himself confident of 
success. He embarked his troops in tempestuous weather, 
under the notion that he should be more likely at such a time 
1o take the garrison by surprise. 

George. He was a pretty arrogant fellow truly, to think 
that the storm would be complaisant enough to let his boats 
have free passage. 

Mrs. M. As might have been expected, the tempest dis- 
persed his transports. He, however, efi^ected a landing, with 
about 800 of his men. With these he marched directly to St. 
Helier, and did indeed take the garrison by surprise, making 
them and the governor prisoners. The alarm and consterna- 
tion throughout the island at this sudden invasion was extreme. 
Major Pierson, a yoimg and gallant officer, who was at that 
time in Jersey, immediately collected all the Brilibh troops in 
the island : I do not know exactly how many there were, but 
their numbers were very inconsiderable. When RuUecourt 
saw them advancing toward the town, of which he and hia 
800 men still kept possession, he summoned them to surrender. 
Their only reply to this command was a furious attack upon 
the French troops, who were obliged to retreat into the mar- 
ket-place. Here they made a stand, but were again charged 
by the British with so much vigor, that not a Frenchman es- 
caped, they being all either killed or taken prisoners. RuUe- 
court was among the slain. The governor, whom he had 
obUged to stand by his side daring the whole engagement 
escaped without a wound. 

Riclmrd. What a triumph that was for the people of Jer 
sey : 

Mrs. M. Alas [ their triumph was mixed with bitter grief, 
for their brave preserver, major Pierson, was killed in the mo- 
ment of victory. His loss was most sincerely lamented, and 
a monument to his memory was erected at the public expense 
in the church of St. Helier. 

George. I have been thinkmg very much of the account 
you gave us yesterday of Paris in the old times ; and I should 
like to know a, little what it is like in our time. 

Mrs. M. 1 will endeavor to satisfy you as well as I can 
but as I have never seen Paris, vou must be contented with 



Hi LOUIS Vlll. [Chap XLll 

sucli a description as I have been able to make out from the 
accounts of others. The city is entered by several gates or 
barriers, many of them of exceedingly beautiful architecture. 
Among the most remarkable, and, indeed, I may almost say 
pecuhar, features of the town itself are the Boulevards. These 
Boulevards form a circuit round the central part of the city, 
the city itself now extending far beyond them, and are on the 
site of the ancient line of the walls which were pulled down 
by order of Ijouis XIV., and the ground laid out as a wide 
road, shaded by rows of trees. This road, or rather fine street 
(for it is almost every where bordered by handsome houses), is 
in fine weather the daily resort of the Parisians. Here they 
saunter about under the shade of the trees, amusing them- 
selves with mountebanks, dancing dogs, and ballad singers, 
and a variety of persons of the same description with which 
the place is thronged. 

Mary. What an amusing place it must be I 

Mrs. M. The Parisians pass much more time out of doora 
than we do. Indeed they have every temptation to do so ; 
for besides the Boulevards there are the gardens of the Lux- 
emburg, the Tuileries, and the Jardin des Plantes, and innu- 
merable other places of attraction. 

RicJiard. Is the Seine a fine river ? 

Mrs. M. It will in itself bear no comparison with tht» 
Thames at London ; but it is rendered a greater ornament 
to the city than our river is, by the spacious quays with 
which the banks on each side are lined, which, being 
paved with flag-stones, form very dehghtful and magnificent 
walks. 

George- Pray, are the houses in Paris built cf brick or 
stone ? 

Mrs. M. In the modern streets they are built of stone, 
but a great proportion of those in the older streets are only 
coated with a cement resembling it. The churches and 
public buildings are many of them very splendid ; and the 
absence of fogs and coal-fires enables them to retain their 
freshness much longer than they would do amid the smoke of 
London. 

Ricliard. I think you said yesterday that Philip Augustus 
built the cathedral of Notre Dame. Is it at all like any of 
our cathedrals ? 

Mrs. M. The shortest answer to your question is thi:: 
ou tline of the front, by which you will see that, although it 
is evidently in what is called the Gothic style, it yet difF<ir8 



OoNr.J 



LOUIS VIII 



145 



inateriaUy fioin any Gothic buildings in England. (See tJu 
vignette at the head of Chapter 'XL J 

Mary. Are the village churches in France like ours ? 

Mrs. M. Here is a view of one from Mr. Cotman's Toui 
in Normandy 




CUDBCH OP QUERQUEVILLE, NEAR ChEKBOCKS. 

G 



CHAPTER XIV. 

LOUIS IX., OB, SAINT LOU18. 
[Years after Christ, 1226—1270.] 




Blanch of Castile. St. Louis. 

C^EEN Blanch, ■whom the late king had appointed to b« 
regent during the minority of her son, who was only eleven 
years old, immediately took upon herself the management of 
affairs. The greater part of the nohles were highly displeased 
that a Svoman, and more particularly that a Spanish woman, 
should presume to rule over them, and they conspired agaiast 
her authority. But Blanch, who possessed a strong and vig- 
orous understanding, defeated their schemes by the decision 
and promptitude of her conduct ; she maintained her powei 
till her son had attained his twenty-first year, and then re 
signed the regency, though by the wish of her son, who paid 
her great deference, she continued for a time to take a part 
in the government. 

Louis had a truly upright and benevolent disposition. Hig 
temper was mild and forgiving, and at the same time bravj 
and firm. In prosperity no man had more meekness, nor in 
adversity more fortitude. Under all circumstances, his integ- 
rity was inflexible, and he appears to have been governed by 
a sincerely religious principle It is, however, to be lamented 



A D. 1243 J LOUIS IX. 147 

thdt the superstitious temper of the times drew him rashly 
into new crusades against the infidels, undertakings ruinous 
to his co-antry, and which at last proved fatal to himself. 

He first took the cross in 1244, in consequence of a danger- 
ous illness, during which he had made a vow, that if he recov- 
ered he would go to the Holy Land. His mother and all his 
wisest counselors vehemently opposed the project ; but his reso- 
lution being taken, nothing would induce him to alter it ; and 
all they could obtain was a promise that he would do nothing 
that should endanger the welfare of liis kingdom, and that he 
would not go till he could leave all his affairs in proper order. 
This he immediately set about doing ; " and never," says an old 
historian, " was an imprudent design more prudently executed." 

In 1248, four years after he had taken the cross, Louis, 
having appointed his mother regent durmg his absence, de- 
parted for the Holy Land, taking with him his queen, Mar- 
garet of Provence, and his tliree brothers, the counts of Artois, 
of Provence, and of Anjou. 

He embarked in August, with part of his forces, at Aigues- 
Mortes in Languedoc,* and sailed first to Cyprus, where he 
continued till the following June, waitmg the arrival of the 
rest of his armament, which, when completed, amounted to 
above 50,000 men. When every thing was ui readiness for 
leaving Cyprus, the fleet steered toward the coast of Egypt, 
it being determined to begin the war by attacking, on his own 
ground, the sultan of that country, who was now the chief 
enemy of the cause of the Latins. Louis efifected a landing 
near Damietta ; and during the night the inhabitants, being 
seized with a panic, evacuated the town, and fled with their 
families and movable effects. The French entered the for- 
saken town the next day, and took possession of it. It was 
the intention of the king to have advanced immediately into 
Egypt, but, owing to the annual inmidation of the Nile, he 
was detained at Damietta until November. 

Here Louis had the inexpressible grief to see his nobles give 
themselves up to the most unbridled licentiousness, wliich 
neither his example nor his reproofs could restrain. He him- 
self did all he coiold to provide for the future necessities of the 
army. He collected all the provisions and treasures that were 
found in the town, and laid them by in storehouses for the 
public benefit, to the great displeasure of the French knights, 
who v/ould have been better pleased to have had them dis* 
tributet among themselves. 

* In the southeast part of Laugaedcc. 



t48 LOUIS IX. . IOhap. XIV 

When the waters had abated, Louis prepared to leave Da, 
mietta ; but he first repaired and strengthened the fortiiica 
tions, and placed a strong garrison in the town. He then de- 
parted, leaving the queen with her ladies at Damietta, and 
took the way to Cairo ; but he soon became entangled among 
the canals with which the country is intersected. At last he 
came to a canal which it was impossible to pass, and her3, 
although continually harassed by Hying troops of the enemy, 
the army began to construct a causewaj^, which might serve 
as a bridge. While they were so employed, a ford was acci- 
dentally found. The count of Artois, with two thousand 
men, dashed through it, and, contrary to the advice of all the 
experienced persons who knew the country, advanced to the 
town of Massoura. The inhabitants having concealed them- 
selves in their houses, the French imagined the place to be 
deserted, and immediately began to plunder it. While they 
were thus engaged, the inhabitants appeared at the tops of 
their houses, and threw down showers of stones on them. At 
the same moment they were also attacked in front by a large 
body of Turkish troops. The count of Artois and many of 
his men were slain, and the rest were only saved by the timely 
arrival of the king with the main army. 

Louis beat off the Turks from Massoura, and forced them 
to retire ; but their numbers w^ere reuTforced by the daily ar- 
rival of fresh troops, and the king at last found it impossible 
to proceed. He therefore took possession of the strongest po- 
sition he could find, and encamped. The Turks now sur- 
rounded him on all sides, and with their Greek fire destroye» 
his machines of war. His army was cut off from procuring 
provisions : a dreadful sickness broke out m the camp, and 
the soldiers were soon in a most deplorable condition. The 
king himself fell ill, and to use the vi^ords of an old chronicle, 
•'being sick in bed, had nothing but courage to maintain life." 

His own sufferings did not, however, make him uimiuidful 
of those of his people, and he gave orders that the sick should 
be conveyed back to Damietta in some French galleys, that 
had advanced up the river. They were embarked accord- 
ingly, but before they could get away, the galleys were seized 
by the Turks, who murdered ail the sick, and threw their 
Dodies overboard. At the same time another body of the 
Turks attacked the camp ; and although the king was so ill 
that he could scarcely sit upon his horse, he rode among the 
ranks, till at last he fainted from excessive weakness. In 
that condition he was taken pris(Hier bv the Turks ; the defea' 



ft.. I) 1260. J 1.0UIS IX. Hi 

of the whoLi army followed, and all who were not slain wer« 
taken prison.3rs. 

This event took place Ap:il 5, 1250. When the news of 
this great calamity reached France, the grief and desolation 
of the people was excessive. Blanch did not long survive it. 
She died partly from grief at her son's captivity, and partly 
from remorse at having had two persons executed as spreaders 
of false news, who had first reported the defeat of the army. 

Louis, in the mean time, had to endure many insults from 
the infidels, and he might have endured worse treatment at 
their hands, had it not been for the great desire of Malec-sala. 
the sultan, to regain Damietta, which he knew was so strong- 
ly garrisoned, that he could more easily obtain it by treaty 
than by force. At last it was agreed that Louis and all his 
people should be restored to their liberty, on giving up that 
town, and also paying a ransom of four hundred thousand 
pounds of silver. Before the terms of this treaty could be 
fully adjusted, Malec-sala was murdered by his emirs. Dur- 
ing the tumult which this event occasioned, the life of Louis 
was in considerable jeopardy, and it is supposed that he owed 
his preservation to the courage and tranquillity of his de- 
meanor, which inspired the Turks with a respect for him. 
When the tumult had subsided, the new sultan ratified the 
treaty which his predecessor had made with the Christians, 
and farther conceded to them a ten years' truce. Thus Louis, 
after a captivity of about two months, regained his liberty. 
He then, instead of returning to Europe, immediately pro- 
ceeded to Acre, where the queen joined him. I must not omit 
to mention, that finding there had been some error in the 
amount of the sum which had been paid for his ransom, he 
afterward made good the deficiency. His courtiers, I believe, 
thought him over-honest ; but Louis reproved them, and 
made them know that he valued his honor too highly to for- 
feit it for silver or gold. 

Louis spent four years in Palestine, and employed himself 
with as much earnestness in repairing the strong towns, and 
in redressing the grievances of the people, as if it had been 
his own country. He redeemed 12,000 Christians from slav- 
ery ; and when he had put the Christian possessions in Syria 
in a proper state of defense, he returned to France. He 
landed at Marseilles, July 2, 1254, having been absent about 
six years. The lord of Joinville, who attended Louis during 
the greater part of that time, has left us a very entertaining 
and interesting history of this crusade. 



150 LOUIS IX. [Chap. XIV. 

The king was received in France with every demonstration 
of j oy, but it was observed with regret that he still continued 
to wear the cross upon his upper garment, a sign that he 
nourished the intention of going again to Palestine. 

He maintained at this time gi'eat state and regularity in 
his court ; but in his own dress and manners he rather affect- 
ed the plainness of a private man, than the pomp of a great 
prince. He earnestly applied himself to the reformation of 
all abuses ; he revoked many oppressive taxes, which the ne- 
cessities of preceding times had jDroduced ; he made regula- 
tions, which were much needed, for the police of the cities, 
and he formed a code of laws, which still goes by his name. 
It must have been a charming sight to have seen this good 
king sitting under the shade of a tree (which is still standing 
in the Bois de Vincennes, near Paris) surrounded by his sub- 
jects, and attending to the complaints of the poor, and re- 
dressing their grievances. 

The perfect integrity of Louis's character inspired univers- 
al confidence. He Avas often called upon to settle the disputes 
of neighboring j)rinces, and instead of fomenting quarrels, as 
had been the general policy of preceding kings,.he always en- 
deavored to be a promoter of peace. Sometimes he was re- 
quired to give judgment in causes in which his own interests 
were concerned. On all such occasions he uniformly decided 
with the most unr^proached and perfect impartiality. Louis 
also aimed at another virtue, which is but rarely practiced — 
the virtue of restitiition. He appointed commissioners to in- 
quire what possessions had, during the last two reigns, been 
unjustly annexed to the royal domains. These he caused to 
be restored to the right owners, and incases where the owner 
could not be ascertained, he distributed the value among the 
poor. He always declared that " it was good j)olicy to bo 
just ; for that a reputation for probity and disinterestedness 
created authority, and gave a prince more real power than 
any accession of territory could do." It is certain that Louis 
by this ujDright and wise conduct preserved peace in his do- 
minions, and brought the affairs of his kingdom into better 
order than any former king had been able to do. 

Charles, count of Anjou, was of a very different character 
from his brother : he was ambitious, covetous, cruel, and un- 
forgiving. Most unhappily for Italy, the pope Urban IV. 
made him an offer of the crown of the Two SiciUes ; that is, 
the island of Sicily and the kingdom of ISTaples, This crown 
had fallen into the hands of the imperial family, by the mar- 



A.D. 1267.] LOUIS IX. 15i 

riage of the heiiess of the last Norman king of Sicily with 
the father of the emperor Frederic II. When Frederic died, 
the crown of the Sicilies was seized by Mainfroi, or Manfred, 
his natural son. The pope, wishing to get it out of the hands 
of the Ghibelins, or emperor's party, oifered it to Charles of 
4njou. Charles could not resist the temptation of being a 
king, and in 1265, having collected an army, he encountered 
Mainfroi at Beneventum. Mainfroi was defeated and slain, 
and Charles took possession of his dominions. He began his 
reign (and indeed I may also say he ended it) with so many 
acts of cruelty, that he made the veiy name of Frenchman 
hateful to the Siciliaiis, and his memory is even now held by 
them in detestation. 

In 1267 several of the princes of Germany joined Con- 
radin, the son of Conrad IV., the last emperor of the Hne of 
Swabia, in an endeavor to drive the French out of Italy ; bixt 
the GeiTnan army was defeated by the French. Conradin 
was made prisoner and carried to Naples, and- Charles, con- 
trary to the established principles by which even in those 
comparatively lawless times, the dealings of one prince with 
another were regulated, caused him to be beheaded, as if he 
had been a traitor. Conradin was the last descendant of his 
ancient family ; he was brave and generous, and Charles, by 
putting him to death, incurred a no less general than just 
detestation. Conradin, when on the scaffold, threw down his 
glove among the crowd, beseeching some one to convey it to 
any of his kinsmen, who would receive it as a pledge of in- 
vestiture ill his rights, and as bequeathing the obligation to 
revenge his death. 

Louis, in the mean time, had, by fair and honest means, 
increased his dominions. In 1258, on the marriage of his 
eldest son Philip with Isabella, daughter of the king of Ara- 
gon, he made a treaty with that king, in which it was agreed 
that France should resign all right — a right, indeed, little 
more than nominal — over that part of Spain which Charle- 
magne had conquered from the Saracens. The king of Aragon, 
on his part, agreed to give up to Louis the more substantia] 
possession of several towns in the south of France (with the 
xception of Montpellier), which he had inherited by the 
marriage of one of his ancestors with an heiress of the family 
of Provence. Louis had also, some time previously, pur- 
chased a part of Champagne from the earl Thibaud, who 
now, in right of his mother, had succeeded to the kingdore 
of Navarre. 



152 LOUIS IX. [Chap. XIV. 

To Heiii y III. of England Louis yielded up the possession 
nf those places in Guienne which his father Louis VITI. had 
won. He did this on condition that Henrj'^ should resign aU 
claim to Anjou and Normandy. Some of his courtiers blamed 
him for yielding them up, bvit he justified himself to them by 
urging the policy of maintaining peace by making a small 
concession. 

England had long been in a state of anarchy. In 1263 
Louis was called on to settle the differences between Henry 
and his barons. Louis blamed both parties : he told the 
barons that they should treat their king with more respect ; 
and advised Henry to observe the terms of the Great Char- 
ter, which his father had been compelled to grant. This ad- 
vice was too wise and temperate to suit the inflamed minds of 
either party ; and the civil dissensions of England continued 
to rage with as much violence as before. I need not here 
teU you of the able and successful part which Henry's son, 
prince Edward, took in his father's affairs ; nor that when he 
had restored tranquillity in England, his ardent spirit panted 
for active employment, and that he gladly joined with thf 
king of France in a crusade. 

Louis, who had never lost sight of this favorite project^ 
having a fleet and aU things in readiness, embarked at Aigues- 
Mort^ early in July, 1270. He was accompanied by hi? 
three eldest sons, by his Tjrother Alfonso, his nephew Robert 
of Artois, Thibaud king of Navarre, Guy earl of Flanders, 
and by many other persons of great distinction. The young 
prince of England and Charles of Anjou, who agreed to fol- 
low with a numerous army from Sicily, were expected to join 
him in the course of the summer. 

Louis, after having narrowly escaped from a fearful tem- 
pest, landed in Sardinia. Circumstances here determined 
him to make an attack on Tunis before he proceeded to the 
Holy Land. He accordingly put to sea again, and, after a 
safe voyage, anchored off the shore of ancient Carthage. 
Carthage was soon taken, and the siege of Tunis begun ; 
but in a few weeks the army was seen to suffer from the ex- 
cessive heat of the climate. The plague broke out in the 
camp, and destroyed great numbers of men. The king him- 
self was seized with it, and soon found himself on the brink 
of death. Sending for his eldest son, he gave him a manu 
script which he had written with his own hand, and which 
contained directions for his future conduct. He gave him an 
earnest exhortation to govern his people with justice and 



A..D 12yo.'\ lOUIS IX. J** 

equity, and to make the fear of God the rule of all his ac- 
tions. He then desired to be lifted from his bed, and laid 
among ashes on the floor of his tent. He expired exclaiming, 
' I will enter thy house : I will worship in thy sanctuary I" 

Just at that moment the fleet of Charles of Anjou arrived. 
As soon as ho landed he sounded his trumpet, and was sur- 
prised to hear no answering sound. Alarmed by the silence 
that pervaded the camp, he mounted a horse and galloped to- 
ward the royal pavilion, where the first object he saw was hia 
brother's corpse extended upon the ashes. 

Louis's son Philip, now become king, fell iU himself soon 
afterward. In this emergency the kings of Sicily and Navarre 
took upon themselves the command of the army. In the royal 
obsequies a strange custom was followed, which was then 
often observed in the case of persons who died in a foreign 
land. The flesh of the corpse was separated from the bones. 
The bones were consigned to Philip to be conveyed to France ; 
Charles retained the flesh, and, when he returned to Sicily. 
had it interred in the abbey of Montereale, near Palermo. 

Louis died August 25th, 1270, in the fifty-fifth yeai of his 
age, and forty-fourth of his reign. He married Margaret of 
Provence, and had four sons and four daughters : — 

(1.) Philip, who succeeded his father. (2.) John Tristan, 
(3.) Peter. (4.) Robert, married Beatrice of Burgundy, whose 
mother was heiress of the lords of Bourbon. Robert took the 
title of Bourbon, and it was by descent from him that three 
hundred years afterward Henry IV. claimed and obtained the 
crown of France. 

{5.) Isabella, married Thibaud II., king of Navarre. (6.) 
Blanch, married Ferdinand Cerdo, infante of Castile. (7.) 
Margaret married the duke of Brabant. (8.) Agnes, married 
the duke of Burgundy. 

Louis established a charity for blind persons, which still 
subsists. He also built several churches and monasteries 
within, the walls of Paris ; but still he did not, as many of 
his predecessors had done, regard the founding a religious 
house as an expiation of sin. He used to say, when speaking 
on this subject, '' that living men were the stones of God's 
temple, and that the church was more beautified by good 
manners than by rich walls." 

Nearly thirty years after his death he was canonized by 
popo Urban VIII. 

O* 



154 LOUIS IX, [Chap. XIV 

CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XIV. 

George. I wish I knew- what became of "that gk ve whicK 
Conradin. threw down among the people. 

3Irs. Markham. I beheve I can tell you. It was taken 
up by a knight of the name of Truches, who carried it to Pe 
dro III., king of Aragon ; and the descendants of that knight 
have always borne the arms of Swabia, in commemoratinh of 
the circumstance. 

George. And what did the king of Aragon do when he 
got the glove ? Did he revenge the death of Conradin ? 

Mrs. M. He did, indeed, most dreadfully, as you shall 
hear when we come to the story of the Sicihan Vespers in the 
next chapter. 

Mary. Pray, mamma, did that poor old earl of Flanders, 
who was so long in prison, ever get his liberty again ? 

Mrs. M. Queen Blanch, during her regency, set him at 
liberty, not so much, perhaps, out of kindness to him, as to 
plague his wife, the countess Jane. It would have been as 
well if Blanch had released at the same time his companion 
in arms, the old count of Boulogne, who, when he foimd that 
the carl of Flanders had regained his liberty, and that he 
himself remained forgotten in prison, put an end to his life in 
a fit of despair. 

Mary. Don't you think Blanch was very cruel to let the 
poor old mail remain in prison ? 

Mrs. M. Blanch was a violent and high-spirited woman ; 
but she showed on many occasions, although perhaps not on 
this, a veiy feeling heart. It happened that some villagers, 
who were serfs to the canons of Notre Dame, refused to pay 
some contributions which their lords demanded of them. The 
canons, in great displeasure, thrust these poor serfs into prison. 
The prison was so small that they could scarcely move, and 
were almost suffocated for want of air. When the queen 
heard of it she was exceedingly shocked, and sent to desire 
the canons to set the men free, and offered to be surety for the 
money demanded of them. 

M'ary. The canons must have been very much obliged to 
her. 

M'>s. M. So far from being obliged, they were very much 
offended, and said that, she had no right to interfere in what 
they chose to do with their slaves. Accordingly, instead of 
setting the men at liberty, they caused all their wives and 
families to be shut up in the same place, where many of then; 



CbKT.l LOUIS IX. ' 155 

actually died of sufibcation. On, this, the queen proceeded tc 
the prison with her attendants, and ordered them to force open 
the doors ; but so great was the dread of incurring the dis- 
pleasure of the church, that none had courage to obey her. 
The queen herself then took up an instrument, and struck the 
first blow. Thus encouraged, her attendants presently forced 
the door, and the prisoners were brought out. Many of them 
fainted at the queen's feet from the effects of the fresh air ; 
but those who were able to speak loaded her with thanks and 
blessings. Her kindness did not rest here, for she freed therr 
from the power of the canons, by enfranchising them and theii 
children. 

George. If Blanch governed in that way, she deserved to 
be regent. 

Richard. Pray, mamma, have you ever read the lord 
Joinville's history, and can you tell us something about 
it ? ^ 

Mrs. M. Lord Joinville was a nobleman of high, rank ; he 
was seneschal of Champagne, and was attached to the service 
of Thibaud, king of Navarre, and accompanied him on the 
crusade. After Joinvdle had taken the cross, but before he 
joined Thibaud' s army, he summoned aU his vassels and 
friends and kinsmen to his castle, and there entertained them 
for a week with all manner of feasting and merriment. Before 
he dismissed them, he told them that he was going to the 
holy war and might never return, and desired that if there 
was any one there to whom he had done wrong,^he would 
come forward, and he should receive amends. Joinville does 
not say whether any of them did so or not, but he goes on to 
tell us, that he then set out on pilgrimages to various holy 
places in the neighborhood, determining when he left his castlo 
not to enter it again till he returned from the holy wars. : In 
the course of these pilgrimages, which he made barefooted and 
in his shirt, he often had to pass in sight of his own home ; 
and he says, " I did not dare turn my eyes that way, for fear 
of feeUng too great regret, and lest my courage should fail on 
leaving my two fine children, and my fair castle of Joinville, 
which I loved to my heart." 

Mary. I think it was very hard upon his children that he 
would not go and wish them good-by. 

Mrs. M. Here is a little sketch of his "fair castle." 
Joinville having joined the troops of the king of Navarre, 
Eailed with them to Cyprus, where he first saw the king of 
France, who was so much pleased with his company, that 



15B LOUIS iX. tCHiP. XIV 

from tliat time he had him constantly near him, and oftan 
asked his opinion and advice. 




■ Castle of Joinville. 

George. If you please, mamma, you need not tell us the 
whole of what this lord Joinville says, but only that part about 
the king being taken prisoner. 

Mrs. M. You recollect, then, that after the battle of Mas- 
Boura, the French were in great distress for provisions, the 
enemy having cut off all their supplies. A pestilential disor- 
der also broke out. This was occasioned partly by the smell 
of the dead bodies, which had been thrown into the canal after 
the battle, and which had been stopped in their passage, as 
they floated toward the Nile, by a small bridge near the 
camp ; and partly, as was supposed, by the poor famished sol- 
diers having eaten eels which had fed upon the putrid bodies. 
The army was now in no condition to combat the Turks, who 
were advancing on all sides of it. On the day of the attack, 
the king, after defending himself as long as he was able, was 
at last obliged to retire from the heat of the combat ; and, to 
give you the good seneschal's own words, " Of all his men at 
arms there was only one with him, the good knight Sir Geof- 
frey de Sergine, and who, I heard say, defended him in like 
manner as a faithful servant defends the cup of his master 
from flies ; for every time the Saracens approached the king, 
he guarded him with vigorous strokes of the blade and point 
of his sword, and it seemed as if his strength was doubled. 
At last he brought him to a house where there was a woman 
Irom Paris, and taking the king off" his horse, he laid him on 
the ground, with his head on the woman's lap, and expected 
that every moment he would breathe his last." Louis was 
found in this state by the Saracens, who bore him off to the 
sultan's tent. As to what farther befell the king at that time 
Joinville is silent, being too much taken up with his own ad* 
ventures, which were indeed sufficiently distressing. 

Richard. I should like to hear what his adventumes were 



CoNV. I LOUIS iiX. 1." 

Mrs. M. Being very ill, he had gone on board a galley, 
in the hope of being conveyed with the rest of the sick to Da 
niietta ; but the vessel had scarcely moved from its station 
before the boats of the enemy appeared on all sides. They 
began an attack upon the nearest galleys, and poor Joinville, 
as he lay upon the deck, expecting his own turn to come 
every minute, saw the Saracens ransacking the other vessels, 
and dragging forth the crew and the passengers. The strong 
and healthy they took prisoners — the weak and ill they threw 
into the river. At last they boarded Joinville' s galley, and 
he thought his last hour was come. But one of the Saracens, 
either because he heard the sailors say that Joinville was the 
king's cousin, or, as we may rather hope, from real compas- 
sion, took him under his protection. 

Mary. What made the sailors tell such a fib ? 

M?-s. M. They thought, I believe, that it might induce 
the Saracens to save Joinville's hfe in hopes of a riansom ; but 
they might have spared themselves the falsehood, for the Sar- 
acens seemed to be actuated by better motives. As soon as 
they reached the shore, a number of men rushed at Joinville 
with drawn swords to cut his throat. " I felt," says he, " the 
knife at my throat, and had already cast myself on my knees ; 
but God delivered me from this peril by the aid of my poor 
Saracen, who led me to the castle where the Saracen chiefs 
were assembled." Here he was treated with tolerable kind- 
ness, and his "good Saracen" gave him a beverage, which in 
two days restored him to health. He was afterward taken to 
the place where the king and the rest of the army were con- 
fined. 

Mary. What became of the queen and the poor ladie.* 
who were left at Damietta ? 

Mrs. M. It was expected that the Saracens would im- 
mediately assault the town, and the French ladies were, as 
you may suppose, in great alarm, especially the queen. She 
was in such continual terror, that she thought every noise she 
heard was the approach of the Saracens, and was forever 
shrieking out, " Help, help — the Saracens are coming I" She 
had " an ancient knight," whom she would scarcely ever per- 
mit to leave her ; anri one day she threw herself on her knees 
before him, and in the greatest agony besought him that he 
would cut olT her head the instant the Saracens should storm 
the city, that she might not fall alive into their hands. To 
this the ancient knight replied, that he begged she would 
make herself perfectly easy, for it was what he had already 



158 3L07IS IX, ,Ch • XIV 

determined in hi'^ fnn \xi3d to do, even if she had not de- 
sired it. 

George. And i^hat /venibrted her, I hope. 

Mrs. M. In the mJdst pf these alarms she gave birth to a 
son, who received the name cf Tristan, " because that he was 
born in misery and poverty." The queen was obhged to quit 
Damietta soon afterward, on account of its being given up to 
the Turks, and she joined the king at Acre. 

Mary. How glad they must have been to have met again 
after all their perils I 

Mrs. M. In the midst of every peril, the pious king never 
for a moment forgot his trust in God. When he finally quit- 
ted Palestine, and was on his voyage back to France, he 
would often recall the attention of his people to the power 
and mercy of God ; and would frequently exhort them " to 
examine themselves well, to see that tliere was nothing in 
their conduct displeasing to God ; beseeching them, if there 
was, to instantly clear themselves of it." 

Mary. I think it would keep one always good, to live 
with such a man as this king Louis was. 

Mrs. M. The society of the good and wise is one of the 
greatest blessings which God can bestow upon us in this life. 
I trust, my dear children, that whenever you have the enjoy 
ment of this blessing, you will not let it be thrown away upon 
you, but will endeavor to profit by it, to .your own advance- 
ment in wisdom and virtue.. 

RicJmrd. Did this entertaining lord of JoiuviUe go with 
St. Louis the second time ? 

Mrs. M. No ; the seneschal excused himself, by saying 
that he found, on his return from the former expedition, that 
his poor people had been so much oppressed and iU-treated, 
that he could not, in consideration to the duty he owed them, 
leave them again. He hved, honored and respected, to a very 
great age ; I believe he was upward of a hundred years pld 
when he died. His book appears to have been written at tho 
request of the queen. He says, that " she, knowiiig with how 
much loyalty and love he had served and attended the de- 
ceased king, her spouse, earnestly entreated hisa, y% honor of 
God, to write a small book or treatise of the ho]w ?-?f«»»s and 
iayingsof the above-mentione<i St, Louis." 



CHAPTER XV. 

PHILIP ni., SURNAMED THE BOLD, 
[Years after Christ, 1270-1286.J 




Robert, Count of Clermont, The Lady of Boukbon, 

Ancestor of Henrv IV. Wife of Robert be Clkrmos* 

In the last chapter we left the French army hefore Tunia 
BJiking under the effects of fatigue and sickness. The younjj 
king would gladly have returned to Europe, could he have 
followed his own wishes ; hut, heing totally incapacitated hy 
illness, he was ohliged, for a time, to give up the command 
of the army to his uncle, Charles of Anjou, who had views of 
his own in continuing the siege. After passing three months 
in useless endeavors to reduce the town, Charles yielded to 
the earnest entreaties of Philip, who had now regained hia 
health, and entered into negotiation with the king of Tunis. 
A treaty was at last concluded, hy which the French agreed 
to raise the siege, on condition that they should be indemnified 
for all the expense they had been at : that Charles should re- 
ceive a tribute from the king of Tunis, and that all the Christ 
ian slaves should be set free. 

Philip embarked for Europe in the end of the year 1270, 
and landed in Sicily. Here his queen died, in consequence of 
a fall from her horse. Here also died Thibaud, king of Na- 
varre, of tho plague ; and the same disorder not long aftep- 



tbO PHILIP III. L^HAP. XV. 

ward, caused liie death of Alphonso, this king's uncle, and of 
his wife, the countess of Provence, who died at Sienna, in 
their way to France. These sad events were a melancholy 
besiinning of the new reign. Philip remained in Sicily till 
the following spring, when he returned to France, bringing 
with him the remains of his father and of his queen, who 
were buried with great funeral pomp in. the abbey of Saint 
Denis. 

Philip was at this time twenty-five years old : he resembled 
in many respects his excellent father : he was pious, liberal, 
and just ; but he was greatly his inferior in understanding, 
and was so singularly simple and credulous, that he was per- 
petually liable to be duped. " It has been remarked of him, 
that he was fond of meddling in the aflairs of other princes, 
and began many great undertakings, and completed none :" a 
sufficient argument of his folly. How he deserved the sur- 
name of the " Bold," I am at a loss to determine ; for cer- 
tainly none of his actions entitled him. to that epithet. I 
have, however, seen it thus accounted for. When he was a 
little boy, in the expedition to Egypt, he used to laugh at his 
mother and her women for being afraid of the Saracens, and 
would boast, more from childish ignorance than from courage, 
that " he did not fear them at all." 

It is, however, but justice to say, that notwithstanding the 
deficiencies in Pliilip's character, his people were happy and 
prosperous during his reign, and the French esteem him as 
one among their very few good kings. 

In 1274 Pliilip married a second wife, Maria of Brabant. 
The king had at .that time a great favorite named Pierre de 
la Brosse, whom he had raised from the condition of a barber 
to be his chief minister. This man took a hatred to the new 
queen, because he found that she had more influence with 
the king than he had, and he determined to eflect her ruin, if 
possible. He soon believed that he had found an opportunity. 
Prince Louis, the king's eldest son, died in 1276, and De la 
Brosse procured a false witness to accuse the queen of having 
poisoned her son-in-law. ' Maria was in great distress at this 
dreadfiil accusation, and might have found it difficult 1? have 
proved her innocence, had not her brother sent her a champion, 
who offered to prove it by a single combat vvdth her accuser 
The accuser being worsted ia the combat, or, according to some 
authors, having refused to accept the challenge, was hung on 
a gibbet as a traitor and coward, and the queen was declared 
innocent 



A D. 1276. J PHILIP III. lei 

Philip's sistei Blanch had married the king of Castile's 
eldest son, who died in 1276, and loft two sons. Th^^se 
children wore shut up in prison by their viicle Sancho, who 
declared himself heir to the crown, and, although his father, 
king Alfonso, was living, acted as if already in possession of it 
Indeed Alfonso was very willing that he should do so ; for he 
was himself so much absorbed in mathematical studies, and in 
writing the history of Castile, that he paid little attention to 
massing affairs. 

The king of France undertook the cause of the poor im- 
j risoned children, and assembling an army, set forth into 
Spain ; but Sancho contrived to corrupt one of Phihp's cour- 
tiers, who gave him constant intelligence of what was going 
on in the French cavnp. Philip, after a short time, finding 
his army in distress for provisions, returned to Paris, without 
having advanced beyond Beam.* 

Soon after his return he received a sealed packet, and the 
moment he had read it he changed countenance, and ordered 
that De la Brosse should be immediately hung on a high 
gibbet which had been lately erected in Paris. It was never 
known what were the contents of the packet which caused 
this sudden anger in the king against his favorite ; but it is 
supposed that it contained a disclosure that De la Brosse 
was the traitor who had betrayed the king's secrets to the 
Castilians. 

While these things were going on in France, in Italy 
Charles of Anjou was increasing in power and in ambition . 
He is said to have aspired to both empires, the East and the 
West. He purchased the title of king of Jerusalem of the 
granddaughter of old Guy de Lusignan. This title, though 
it did not add to his power or territory, added to his pride, 
and helped to increase the number of his enemies. Among 
these was Pedro III., of Aragon, who had married a daughter 
of Mainfroi, and claimed the crown of Sicily in her right ; and 
a conspiracy was at length formed to expel both Charles and 
his whole party from the island, and place Pedro on the 
throne. 

The principal agent in this conspiracy was John of Pro- 
cida; once lord of a small island in the Gulf of Naples, but 
of wliich he had been deprived by Charles. This man, 
animated by a spirit of revenge and hatred, devoted his 
. whole time and tho-jghts to the furtherance of the plot, and 
traveled about from place to place, sometimes in the disguise 
* A province in the southwestern part rf France. 



l()'2 PHILIP III Chap. aV 

of a physician, and sometimes of a friar. The common storj 
is, that a general massacre of the French was a part of the 
onginal plot, and that this horrible design was in agitation 
two years ; and conducted so secretly that nothing transpired 
to give them any warning of their approa rhing fate. 

At length, as this relation proceeds, every thing being ripu 
for execution, Easter eve, 1282, was the day appointed for 
the massacre ; and the ringing of the vesper-bell, at live 
o'clock in the afternoon, was to be the signal to the assassins. 
At that hour, as the French, in ignorant security, were sitting 
at supper, the infuriate Sicilians rushed upon them, and in 
the short space of two hours there was not a Frenchman left 
alive in Palermo, where the massacre began, with the excep- 
tion of one man alone whose life was spared on account of his 
extraordinary probity. The name of this man deserves to be 
remembered. He was Guilliame de Pourcelets, a gentleman 
of Provence.* Every other town in Sicily, in which any 
French were to be found, followed the example thus set by 
Palermo, and it is estimated that eight thousand persons fell 
in this massacre, which is known by the name of the Siciliaii 
Vespers. 

When Charles, who was at this time absent from Sicily,* 
was informed of what had passed, he became absolutely 
furious with passion He hastened to Messina with aU the 
forces he could muster, and laid siege to it ; but the Sicilians, 
who well knew his unsparing temper, defended themselves 
with the bravery of desperation, and Charles found himself 
obliged to retire to Calabria, and there wait for reinforce- 
ments. 

Pedro, all this time, had not been idle. Under the pretense 
that he was going on a crusade, he had craftily borrowed mon- 
ey from the king of France, and had equipped a fleet and 
army. He now appeared before Sicily, and landing at Paler- 
mo about the end of August, 1282, was proclaimed king. 
His object being to gain time, he had next recourse to an un- 
worthy stratagem to induce Charles to a suspension of hos- 
tilities. He sent him a message to this effect, " that, old 
and broken down as they both were, and unfit for comlDats, 
ithey were yet, such as they were, equal to each other ; and 
he invited him to decide this quarrel by single combat, 
each to be attended by a hundred chosen knights." 

* In some of the accounts the name of one other person is also recorded as having 
been saved for tlie same reason. Though the conspirac;/ against Cliarles and 
Iiii? party had been long on foot, it is probable that the massacre itself was a sudden 
oulbreak, and Sismondi represents it as such 



A.D. 1283.] PHILIP IIL 163 

Charles, who was more chivalrous than wise, accepted this 
challenge, and gi-anted a truce till the 1st of July, 1283, the 
day appointed for the combat. Edward I. of England, who 
acted in some sort as a mediator between the parties, pro- 
posed that the meeting should take place on a plain near 
Bordeaux. 

On the 1st of July, an immense concourse of persons of all 
nations assembled to see the fight, and as soon as the sun was 
risen, Charles, punctual to his appointment, appeared on the 
plain with his hundred knights. There he remained till the 
sun went down, expecting his antagonist; but none appeared, 
and Charles retired from the field burning with fresh rage. 

Pedro, however, did come to Bordeaux in the evening of 
that day. Affecting a mighty fear lest the king of France 
(who had never once entertained such a thought) should 
seize his person, he deposited his arms with the seneschal of 
Bordeaux, as a testimony of his having kej)t his appointment, 
and then hastily departed. 

The pope and the king of France were nov/ roused against 
Pedro, and the pope, to show his disapprobation of his un- 
knightly conduct, degraded him from his royal station, and 
bestowed the kingdom of Aragon onCharles of Valois, second 
son of the king of France. Pedro laughed at the anathemas 
of the pope. He collected a numerous fleet, and gave the 
command of it to De Lauria, the most famous admiral of his 
day. With this fleet De Lauria appeared before Naples, 
Avhich, in tho absence of Charles of An j on, was governed by 
his son, Charles the Lame. He being, like his father, more 
brave than prudent, engaged De Lauria with unequal forces. 
He was taken prisoner, and was carried to Messina, where 
the Sicilians would have beheaded him, in revenge for the 
death of Conradin, which was still fresh in their memories, 
had not Constance, Pedro's queen, rescued him from their 
hands, and sent him under safe custody to Sj^ain. 

The captivity of his son, together with his affront at Bor- 
deaux, drove Charles almost to frenzy. He hurried from 
place to place, and from city to city, till the agitation of his 
mind threw him into a fever, of which he died January 7th, 
1 285. His nephew, Robert of Artois, was appointed to the 
regency of Naples during the captivity of Charles the Lame. 

We must now return to Philip, from whom the affairs 
of Charles of Anjou have so long detained us. In 1285 he 
marched with an army toward Spain, with the design of 
securing to his son Charles the gift which the pope had made 



i64 PHILIP III. Ouip. XV. 

him of the ciown of Aragon. Pedro, who had no intention 
of yielding up his kingdom, at the will of the pope, met the 
French army on the confines of Spain. He received a mortal 
wound in an ambuscade, and died, leaving the kingdom ct 
Aragon to Alfonso, his eldest son, and that of Sicily to James 
his second son. 

Philip's arms had at first some little success ; but a fleet, 
which was laden with provisions for his army, being taken 
by De Lauria, he was so greatly disheartened by this mis- 
fortune, and also so much broken down by sickness, that he 
resolved to abandon all farther attempts on Aragon, and to 
return home. But he could get no farther than Perpignan, 
where he expired, October 6th, 1286. He was in the forty- 
first year of his age, and had reigned sixteen years. By his 
first wife, Isabella of Aragon, he had three sons : — 

(1.) Louis, died young. (2.) Philip, succeeded his father. 
(3.) Charles, count of Valois. 

By his second wife, Maria of Brabant, he had one son and 
two daughters : — 

(1.) Louis, count of Evreux. (2.) Margaret, married 
Edward I., king of England. (3.) Blanch, married the dukt* 
of Austria. 

Maria of Brabant was a great encourager of poets. 

By the death, without children, of Philip's uncle, Alfonso, 
and of his wife, who was heiress of Toulouse, the territories> 
of the ancient counts of Toulouse devolved to the crown of 
France. 

Thibaud, king of Navarre, had been succeeded by his broth 
er, Henry the Fat, who died in 1274, leaving an infant 
daughter. The kings of CastUe and Aragon each tried ta 
obtain the young queen for one of their own sons ; but hei 
mother fled with her to France, and placed her imder the 
•protection of Pliilip ; and in 1284 she married Philip, the 
king's then eldest son, who assumed the title of king of Na- 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XV. 

Richard. As that queen, Maria of Brabant, was an en- 
courager of poets, I hope she afforded some protection to the 
poor troubadours. 

Mrs. Markham. Either the troubadours were all destroyed 
m the wars with the Albigenses, or else the taste for thei. 



CoNT.] PHILIP III. 165 

poetry was gone by ; for we hear no more of them after this 
time, and then- light and lively songs were succeeded by a grave 
and nilegori^al kind of poetry. The Romance of the Rose 
which was begun by a poet in the roign of St. Louis, aad 
finished by another poet who lived thirty years later, was one 
of the most popular of these poems. 

IticJiard. I always thought it was written by Chaucer, 
our old English poet. 

Mrs. M. Chaucer's poem of the Romance of the Rose is 
a translation, or, to speak more properly, an imitation of the 
French poem.. I do not exactly know how many verses 
Chaucer has in his Romance of the Rose, but the original 
consisted of 20,000. 

Mary. I hope it was very entertaining, since it was so 
long. 

Mrs. M. It was the history of an imaginary dream. 

George. A dream of 20,000 verses ! I would not read il 
through — no, not to have a holiday all the rest of the year I 

Mrs. M. It was, however, much prized and admired in 
its day, and contained a description and personification of 
every possible human virtue and vice. At a time when peo- 
ple had so few books, it was a great merit in a book to be- 
long. 

Mary. When so few people could read, they could not 
want many books. 

Mrs. M. They seem to have made the most of those they 
had. In most fainilies the priest, and any one else who could 
read, were expected to entertain the rest by reading aloud to 
them. Few houses were provided with more than one book ; 
and when that one was read through, a new book was never 
thought of, but the old one was begun over again. 

Mary. If I had lived in those days, and could have cho- 
sen, I would have lived in a house or a castle where the book 
was a romance, and not a dull, tedious allegory. 
' Mrs. M. The old romances were nearly as dull and te- 
dious as the allegories, and a great deal more absurd. They 
strangely and unscrupulously intermingled truth and fiction, 
and ingeniously disregarded all historical and geographical 
probabiUties. For instance, in one of them (of which I forget 
the name) Babylon is introduced into France, and placed on 
the confines of Bretagne ; and Judea is described as the ad- 
joining country to Ireland. One of the oldest and most celf> 
brated of these romances is entitled Brutus. 
KicJiard. It was a Roman story, I suppose. 



161: PHILIP III. I Chap. XV 

Mrs. M. The name would naturally lead you to think 
60 ; hut, in fact, it is a fahulous history of the kings of En- 
gland : and it is from this ismance that the histories of king 
Arthur, and of the enchanter' Merlin, are derived, as also 
many of those fairy tales which still amuse the children of the 
present day. 

Mary. Then was the romance of Brutus a child's book ? 

Mrs. M. By no means, my dear, it was written for the 
amusement of grave and growu-up people. The French have 
always had a great fondness for fairy tales ; and Mother 
Goose's tales, and many books of that description, are derived 
from the French. . 

George. I remember you once read us some pretty little 
stories in verse, which were something, but not quite, hke 
fairy tales, and you said they were French fables. 

Mrs. M. They were fabliaux translated by Mr. Way. A 
fabliau signifies a short tale in verse. This was a favorite 
species of writing in France, tiU it was, in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, succeeded by a sedate, sentimental kind of romance, 
the great charm of which consisted in a mixture of high- 
wrought sentiments and impossible incidents, jumbled most 
solemnly, and, at the same time, most comically together. 
Amadis de Gaul, so often quoted in Don Quixote, was one 
of these. 

Richard. I had several questions I wanted to ask you 
yesterday ; but we had so many things to talk about, I had 
aot time. 

Mrs. M. You had better ask them now, while you re- 
member them. 

Richard. In the first place, then, mamma, what was a 
seneschal ? 

M.rs. M. He was a sort of heutenant appointed by the 
king to superintend the distribution of justice in the different 
districts which were under the jurisdiction of the crown. The 
name of seneschal more particularly pertains to the southern 
parts of France. In the north these lieutenants were styled 
baillies, or bailifis. The appointment of seneschals and bail- 
lies tended greatly to weaken the power of the nobles, and to 
strengthen that of the crown : for the lower orders were thus 
enabled to appeal from, the tyrannical jurisdiction of their feu- 
dal chiefs to the sovereign legislation of the king. 

Ricliard. The next thing I wanted to know was, whera 
all the money came from whioh was paid for the ransom of 
Saint Loui.s ? 



.3oNV.] PHll.[P III. 167 

Mrs. M. It \i-as doubtless raised with great diffiuultv. 
A-Hiong other expedients, the silver balustrades which sur- 
rounded the tomb of Hichard Coeur de Lion at Rouen were 
taken down and melted to make up the sum. 

Gsoi-ge. And I dare say Richard, if he could have known 
V/hat was going forward, would have thought that they were 
put to a very good use. 

Ria'iard. Pray, mamma, were these silver balustrades 
coined into money, or were they sent to the Turks all in a 
lump ? 

Mrs. M. They probably were sent " all in a lump ;" for 
it was then a common practice to pay large sums by weight 
in pieces of uncoined metal. Only a small quantity of money 
was coined for the convenience of small payments. 

Mary. It must have been very troublesome to pay money 
in those great heavy lumps of silver or gold. 

Mrs. M. The silver coinage of the early French kings was 
BO shamefully debased, that most persons probably preferred 
receiving a payment by weight to receiving it in coin. The 
practice of mixing silver and copper seems to have been be- 
gun by Philip I., whose silver coin was alloyed by one-third 
of copper. His example was followed by most of his succes- 
sors, and the old French coinage was very inferior, in point 
of real value, to the coinage of England. Most of the pre- 
tended silver money which was coined in the private mints in 
France (many of the nobles had mints of their own) was so 
bad, that from its color, which showed the want of good metal, 
it was called black money.* 

Bdchard. And now, mamma, comes the last question 1 
had to ask you. What was that Greek fire with which the 
Turks molested the army of Louis ? 

Mrs. M. It was a kind of inflammable substance which 
burned every thing it came near. It was foimerly very much 
employed in all the eastern countries. 

llichard. How could the people who used it avoid being 
burned by it themselves ? 

Mrs. M. The art of using and of preparing this Greek 
fire was kept a great secret, and we know very httle about it 
Joinville tells us it was put into barrels, and was sent forth 
by means of a machine which he calls a petardie, but which 
he does not describe. Ho says, that when these barrels were 
sent off, they looked like dragons of fire flying through the 
air ; and that when the men saw one coming, they threw 

* &£>jeta nigra. 



168 PHILIP ill 'Chap. XV . 

themselves upon their knees, and gave themselves up for 

lOSt. 

George. Could they not have run and got out of the way 

Dfit? 

Mrs. M. When the barrels fell, they exploded with a great 
noise ; the fire burst forth, and water would not extinguish 
it. Vinegar was said to have an efiect upon it ; but the best 
method, when that could be adopted, was to smother it with 
sand. 

Richard. Did the people of Europe ever make any of thin 
fire ? 

Mrs. M. Several of the crusaders learned, or believed that 
they had learned, the art of making it ; and antiquaries tell 
us it was composed of sulphur, bitumen, naphtha, and various 
kinds of gums : but . the only time that I can recoUect its 
being used in Europe to any purpose was once by Philip Au- 
gustus, who destroyed the English fleet at Dieppe with some 
Greek fire which he found at Acre, when he and king Rich- 
ard took that city, and which he brought with him to 
France. 

Richard. Ah I if poor king Richard could have knovra 
that when he helped to take Acre, he was helping to bum his 
own fleet ! 

George. Now that Richard has got to the end of all his 
questions, there is just one thing I want to say. The little 
picture you showed us yesterday of the castle of Joinville does 
not give me at all the idea of a castle, such as I should have 
supposed these fighting nobles would have hved in. 

Mrs. M. As the feudal system dechned, the nobles bo 
came less of fighters, and their chateaux (for in France every 
gentleman's house m the country is called a chateau) became 
less hke fortresses. Still, if you examine this little sketch of 
the castle of Joinville, you will perceive many traces of the 
ancient feudal castle. The dwelling of the chief is, you see, 
placed on the top of the hill, surrounded by a wall, which, 
although it is apparently intended more for ornament than 
defense, is a wail nevertheless. Along the slope of the hill 
is what the artist has doubtless intended for a vineyard ; and 
there, during times of danger, the laborers, while at work, 
were under the protection of the archers on the walls. At 
the bottom of all is the town or village, where the houses of 
the serfs stood clustering under the eye and shelter of theix 
liege lord. 

Georp;e. I should like to see a real old French cfistle, Ihal 



tiONT.j PHILIP III. Ifi'^ 

I might see what difierence there was betweon the castles in 
France and those in England. 

Mrs. M. If I may venture to judge by the prints which 
[ have seen of the ruins of old castles in France, I should 
"magine that the French built their castles with loftier towers 
and Avith still more massy walls than the EngUsh. In the 
general plan and disposition of the different parts of the build 
ing they were probably much alike. I find, however, one dis- 
similarity in the interior arrangements which may be worth 
noticing. The lord of an Enghsh castle always dwelt in the 
center tower or keep, the upper part of which was occupied 
with the state apartments ; while in a French castle the 
keep, or, as they called it, the donjon tower, was the habita 
tion of the four principal officers ; and the lord or castellain 
had a separate house in the outer ballium, which, in an En- 
glish castle, was the place appropriated for the barracks and 
stables, &c. 

Ricliard. What, pray, had those four officers to do ? 

Mrs. M. In a large castle they had a great deal to do 
The first was entitled the gtcard, the second the ivatch, the 
third the provisioner, and the fourth the gate opener ; and 
these names, as I suppose you will think, sufficiently explaij) 
the nature of their respective offices. 

H 



CHAPTER XVI. 

PHILIP IV., SURNAMED THE FAIil. 
[Years after Christ, 1285—1314.] 





A Knioht Templar. 



CiiARLEg OF Anjou, Kino of Sicily. 



The happiness and prosperity which France had of late 
enjoyed was now drawing to a close. The young king, un- 
like his father and his grandfather, was of a violent and un- 
forgiving temper. He was not deficient in abilities ; hut all 
the powers of his mind were directed to the gratification of 
his own selfish wishes. He loved money, not so much to 
hoard as to squander ; and he never scrupled committing any 
act, hoAvever cruel or unjust, to obtain it. He was extraor- 
dinarily handsome ; but the beauty of his person only render- 
ed the deformities of his character the more hideous. His 
wife, Jane, the heiress of Navarre, was also of a violent and 
vindictive temper ; and it was another misfortune of his 
reign that he had avaricious and insolent men for his minis- 
ters. Thus France, in the time of Philip the Fair, had her 
Full share of misery. 

In the early part of his reign Philip was much occupied 
by the afiairs of Aragon, and in endeavors to enforce the 
claim which his brother pretended to have to that kingdom, 
m right of the pope's donation. Edward I. of EngJaml 



A D :233.J PHILIP IV. 1 

whose daughter was married to the king of Aragon, was de- 
sirous to maintain peace between Philip and Alfonso ; hut all 
his good offices were inefiectual. He could only obtain the 
release of Charles the Lame. Charles the Lame no sooner 
recovered his liberty than he and Charles of Valois joined 
their forces against Alfonso of Aragon and his brother James ; 
but after a struggle which kept Europe in a continual ferment 
for some years, the two Charleses were obliged to give up the 
contest, and to leave the princes of Aragon in possession of 
their territories. 

In 1293 a private quarrel between a French and an En 
glish sailor involved the two nations in a war. The quarrel 
being taken up by the crews of their two ships, spread from 
them to the fleets of both countries, and much piracy and 
outrage followed. Edward and Philip each demanded a 
compensation for the damage which his subjects had received, 
and this each refused to give. Philip summoned Edward as 
his vassal to appear before the parliament of Paris ; and Ed- 
ward sent his brother, the earl of Cornwall, to negotiate for 
him. But he, not being a politician, was no match for Philip, 
who prevailed with him to give up six towns in Guienne, as 
a mere matter of form, promising to surrender them again. 
When Philip, however, had once got possession of these 
towns, he refused to resign them. Edward was extremely 
angry at this proceeding, renounced his homage to Phihp, and 
refused to acknowledge himself a vassal of France. Philip 
teent Robert of Artois with an army into Guienne ;* but little 
was done, both kings being at this time more occupied with 
other projects. Edward's favorite project, as you probably re- 
member, was the conquest of Scotland, and that of Philip was 
the annexing Flanders to his o\vn dominions. 

Flanders was at this time in the possession of Guy Damr 
pierre, who had inherited it from his mother, the youngest 
sister to the countess Jane. He was a brave and venerable 
man, and was one of those knights who had accompanied 
Saint Louis to the Holy Land. The Flemings, naturally a 
fickle people, were easily won over by the bribes and artifices 
of Philip to take ofiense at the measiires pursued by their 
earl, and loudly to express their discontents. Guy, thinking 
that an alliance with England would strengthen his power at 
home, offered his daughter Philippa in marriage to Edward, 
the young prince of Wales. Philip was resolved to prevent 
this marriage, and took effectual means to do so. He invited 
' On the Garonne, in the southwest part of France. 



17% PHILIP IV LChap. XVI 

•»e old earl and his wife and daughter, under a show of 
friendship, to Paris ; and when they arrived he caused them 
all to he shut up in prison. The earl and countess obtained 
their liberty in about a year ; but Phillppa was not permittea 
to accompany them. The king, under the plea that she was 
his god-daughter, and that he had therefore a right to detain 
her, kept her a prisoner during the rest of her life, notwith- 
standing all the earl her father could do, and notwithstanding 
the united efforts of the pope and the king of England, who 
tried hard to obtain her liberty. 

You may easily believe that Philip's overbearing and am- 
bitious conduct made him many enemies. The king of Eng- 
Sand, the emperor of Germany, and many of the German 
princes, joined the earl of Flanders in a league against him. 
But Philip, by bribes and other means, contrived to counter- 
act this league ; and Guy soon saw all his allies fall away, 
and found that he had to bear the burden of the war alone. 

Pliilip made a truce with Edward in 1297, which was 
prolonged afterward from time to time. He also gave him 
his sister Margaret in marriage, and his daughter Isabella to 
the young prince of Wales. These affairs being settled, 
Philip turned his whole attention toward Flanders, which he 
seemed determined to overwhelm. He summoned all his vas- 
sals ; and, that no one might be hindered from obeying the 
summons, he forbade all trials by combat, all private wars, 
and all tournaments, till such time as " the king's wars 
should be ended." 

The command of the army was given to Charles of Valois 
v/ho entered Flanders in 1299, and besieged Ghent, where 
the earl and his family were. The earl, finding liimself thu* 
hardly pressed, determined to go to Paris and plead his cause 
with the king in person. The count de Valois undertook to 
conduct him, and promised that if he could not obtain peacp 
within the year, he would bring him back in safety to Ghent 
Under the faith of this promise, Guy, with two of his sons 
get out ; but when he arrived in Paris, Philip protested thai 
he was not bound by the engagement thus made, and shul 
up the old earl and his sons in prison. At this Charles ol 
Valois was so much offended that he quitted his brother's 
Bervice, and went into Italy, and entered into that of the 
pope. 

Philip now believed himself master of Flanders. He 
£)laced garrisons in all the towns, and appointed Chatillon 
governor ; and, contrary to all his former promises, he loaded 



^ D 1302. J THILIP IV in 

ihe people A\"tli taxes. The Flemings, unaccustomed to &uch 
i/ranny, resolved to free themselves from it. They rose uu 
as by one consent, and made a general massacre of the 
French. On the news of this insurrection Philip sent an 
army of 50,000 men into Flanders. The Flemings had only 
raw and undisciplined troops, and were destitute of experi- 
enced officers. The French army, on the other hand, con- 
sisted of veteran troops, and was commanded by Robert of 
Artois, the most experienced general of his age. But, as it 
happened, their apparent want of military skill proved the 
Flemings' best security : for Robert, despising them, and re- 
garding them as an army of shopkeepers, thought his victory 
over them so certain that he neglected many necessary pre- 
cautions. The consequence was, that in a battle, which was 
fought near Courtray, on the 9th of June, 1302, his troops 
Vi^ere completely beaten, and he and his son slain. After the 
battle the Flemings collected on the field four thousand gilt 
spurs, of the kind worn only by knights and noblemen, and 
himg them up in the church at Courtray as a trophy of their 
victory. 

Philip, more exasperated than ever, assembled a larger 
army than before, a'.id, commanding it in person, entered 
Flanders in 1304. He gained a great victory, and about 
the same time his fleet defeated the Flemish fleet. This 
double disaster reduced the Flemings to desperation, and, 
shutting up all their shops, they assembled in a vast mul- 
titude, and marching boldly up to the French army, 
which was then besieging Lisle, demanded peace or instant 
battle. 

This prompt and bold proceeding astonished the king, who 
granted them peace, one of the conditions of which was that 
their earl should be restored to them. He was accordingly 
set at liberty, and went back to liis country. Returning ai- 
terward to France to complete the treaty with Philip, he died 
there at the age of eighty. His son, Robert de Bethune, suc- 
ceeded to the earldom, and the Flemings, who, for the pres- 
ent, were cured of their love of change, remained tolerably 
faithful to him. 

These wars in Flanders, which I have thus briefly related, 
occupied several years. During the time they were going on, 
Philip had been also engaged in an angry war of words with 
Boniface VIII. This pope was one of the most imperious 
and haughty men who ever sat in the papal chair ; but in 
Philip he found a temper as ha^ighty and imperiou;' is hie 



174 HIUP IV. L^HAP. XVI. 

own. Their disagreements tegan as early as the year 1 295, 
when Boniface sent to desire that Philip would make peace, 
with the king of England, on pain of excommunication. On 
this, Philip sent him word, in return, that it was the business 
of a pope to exhort, and not to command ; and that, for his 
part, he would allow no one to dictate to him in the govern- 
ment of his kingdom. This hold answer laid the foundation 
of a lasting enmity between Phihp and Boniface. They 
omitted no opportunity of thwarting and of injuring each 
other : they even descended to personal abuse. The pope 
told the king of France that he was a fool, and the king of 
France accused the pope of heresy, immorality of conduct, and 
even of magic. At last Pliilip took it into his head to have 
Boniface brought by force to attend a council which was to 
be held at Lyons. For that purpose he dispatched a chosen 
band of soldiers to Italy, under the command of Nogaret. 
They found the pope at his native town of Anagnia, in 
Abruzzo,* whither he had gone to avoid the many enemies 
whom his overbearing temper had raised against him at 
Rome. Nogaret bribed the people of Anagnia to admit him 
into the town ; and one of the Colonna family (the pope's 
chief enemies at Home) found entrance with him. Nogaret 
proceeded to the pope's palace, and easily became master of 
his person, and was leading him away prisoner, when Colonna 
struck the pope a violent blow on the face with his iron gaunt- 
let, which instantly covered him with blood. Boniface ut- 
tered loud and violent cries of pain and resentment. His 
countrymen now repented of having betrayed him into the 
hands of his enemies. They rose and rescued him, and drove 
Nogaret and Colonna out of the town. 

Boniface did not long survive the affront he had received ; 
it is said that the violence of his ungoverned temper threw 
him into a fever ; and that he died raving mad, having, in 
the paroxysms of his frenzy, gnawed off his fingers. His death 
took place in 1303 ; he was succeeded by Benedict XL, a 
mild and peaceable man, who was desirous to heal the breaches 
wliich had been caused by the violent conduct of his prede- 
cessor. Benedict, however, lived only a few months, and af- 
ter his death the cardinals found it so very difficult to choos. 
a successor, that the papal see remained vacant more than a 
year. At last Bertrand de Got was elected pope, and took 
the name of Clement V. He was a native of Gascony, and 
consequently a subject of the king of England ; but he was 
• In Italy. 



4..D 1305 



I'HILIP IV. 



17S 



completely won over by Philip to the interests of France, 9Ji(\ 
iremoYed the papal see from Rome to A"vignon.* 




qii^s9 






,1 ' ' S-r 




^,:.-. _ "-^J^^^^^Ss^"""^"- 



AVI6N0N 

Clement was crowned pope at Lyons, Nov. 14, 1305, ni 
the presence of the king and the chief nobles of France. As 
the pope was returning from church, the king, who had been 
leading the pope's horse, resigned his office to the duke of 
Bretagne, and mounted his own horse. At that moment an 
old wall, on which a number of persons were standing to view 
the procession, fell ; the duke of Bretagne was killed on the 
spot, and many other persons were killed and wounded. Th'ji 
pope himself had a very narrow escape ; he was struck on 
the head by a stone, which knocked off his tiara. The 
king and his brother, Charles of Valois, also received hurts. 
This melancholy adventure of the new pope was regarded as 
a very bad omen by all the superstitious people of the time ; 
ut I do not know that any great disaster followed, except, 
indeed, the disastrous fate of the Knights Templars, whose 
ruin took place during his popedom. These kiughts, as I be- 
lieve you know, were an order of militaiy monks, which had 
been established during the early times of the crusades for tht? 
* AvAgttoa is near the mouth of the B-hone. 



1T6 T'HILir IV. [Chip. XVI 

protection of tlie pilgrims who visited the holy sepuleher 
They had, in the course of time, become exceedingly affluent; 
and had purc.iased lands in several countries of Europe. They 
lived dispersed, but were still under the dominion of their grand 
master, who exercised a despotic control over them. 

The Templars in France had taken part with the people 
jii some popular commotions ; and partly on this account, and 
partly for the sake of getting possession of their riches, Philip 
had marked them for destruction. He had many secret con- 
ferences on this subject with Clement, who used, for the sake 
of greater privacy, to meet him in a wood near Avignon. It 
was concerted between them that Philip, under pretense of 
holding a consultation with the Templars respecting a new 
crusade, should summon them to appear at Paris in October^ 
1307. The grand master, James de Molai, was then in Cy- 
prus ; but he and sixty of his knights nevertheless obeyed the 
summons. As soon as they arrived they were thrown into 
prison, and accused of a variety of crimes, of which they were 
innocent : but their innocence availed them little ; the pope 
dissolved their order, and fifty-seven of the knights were con- 
demned and burned alive. The grand master, and three of 
his principal officers, remained in prison. After lingering 
some years in confinement, they urgently demanded to be 
brought to trial; and in 1314 were indulged with a sort of 
mock trial, and de Molai, who could not read, was made to 
affix his seal to a confession of crimes. He and his compan- 
ions were condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and they 
were placed on a scaffolding, raised in front of Notre Dame, 
to hear their confessions and their sentence read. De Molai 
exclaimed, with a loud voice, that their confessions were false ; 
that he and his knights had been trepanned into assenting to 
them ; and that they were innocent of the crimes imputed to 
them. On this the king was violently enraged, and ordered 
that they should all be burned to death by a slow fire. The 
place he appointed for their execution was at the back of the 
garden wall of his own palace ! The knights submitted to 
the tortures of their lingering death with incredible constancy. 
It is said that de Molai, while at the stake, summoned the 
pope in forty days, and the king in four months, to appear be- 
fore the throne of God to answer for his murder. It is certain 
thart both the pope and the kmg died nearly within the stated 
time. 

The order of the Templars was every where suppressed ; 
but in no country were they treated with so much cruelty as 



A.l>. 1314.1 PHILIP IV 17? 

ai France. Their possessions were nominally transferred tc 
the order of the knights of St. John of Jerusalem ; but thf 
king and the pope, it is supposed, retained the greater part. 

The government of Philip grew every year more oppres-sive. 
'ifter he had exhausted the resources of taxes and imposts, he 
had recourse to debasing his coinage, and at the same time 
increasing the nominal value of it — an expedient which could 
only afford him a temporary rehef, and was very ruinous to 
his subjects. 

The latter years of his reign were also disgraced by the 
levity of his sons' wives. 

Philip had three sons, Louis, Philip, and Charles. Mar- 
garet, the wife of Louis, was punished for her misconduct with 
great severity. She was imprisoned in Chateau Gadlard, and 
it is supposed was privately put to death. Blanch, the wife 
of Charles, saved her life by declaring her marriage null, by 
reason of consanguinity, and her punishment was remitted to 
perpetual confinement in a convent. Jane, the wife of Philip, 
was probably considered as the least guilty of the three, and 
was restored to her husband and family, after a year's impris- 
onment. 

In 1314, as Philip was huntiiag in the forest of Fontain 
bleau, his horse fell with him, and he was so much hurt, that 
he died Nov. 4. He was in the forty-sixth year of his age, 
and the twenty-ninth of his reign. 

While on his death-bed, he was touched with a late re- 
oentance, and taking pity on his poor oppressed people, he be- 
sought his son Louis, with his dying breath, to moderate the 
taxes, to maintain justice and good order, and to coin no base 
money. 

Philip married Jane, queen of Navarre, who died in 1303 
He had three sons and two daughters : 

(1.) Louis, (2.) Philip, (3.) Charles, who all reigned suc- 
cessively, and died young without heirs male. The crown 
then went to the son of Charles of Valois. 

(1.) Margaret, married Ferdinand of Castile, son of Sancho, 
the usurper. (2.) Isabella, married Edward II., king of Eng- 
land. 

During this reign, the dominions of the crown were in- 
creased by Champagne and Brie, which was part of the in- 
heritance of the queen of Navarre. Philip also forcibly 
annexed the city of Lyons to his own territories. That city 
had formerly belonged to the kingdom of Aries, but latterly 
had been independent, and was g"-'-'erned by an archliishop. 



i78 FHILir IV [Chap. XVi 

During the whole of Philip's reign it had been his policj 
to depress the nobles, and to raise the middle classes of thi. 
people. He allowed persons of low birth to purchase fiefs, 
by the possession of M^hich these persons were elevated to the 
rank of nobles. He still farther mortified the old nobility, by 
issuing a patent of nobility in favor of Ralph, his goldsmith. 
And to raise the condition of the middle classes in general, he 
allowed the different communes to send deputies to attend the 
meetings of the states-general, which till then had been com- 
posed only of nobles and prelates. 

In 1300, pope Boniface VIII. established a jubilee. This 
festival was kept with great solemnity, and so many people 
resorted to Home to be present at it, that many nobles, not 
being able to procure lodgings, were obliged to sleep in sheds 
and hovels, and some even in the streets. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XVI. 

Richard. Pray, mamma, what were the states-general ? i 
suppose they were much the same as our parliaments. 

Mrs. Markham. They have very frequently the name oi 
parliament given to them ; but as there also existed in France, 
from a very ancient period, other and very different bodies also 
called parliaments, it is proper and necessary to distinguish 
between them. 

In all the feudal governments, the power of the crown was 
originally confined within narrow limits. I do not mean that 
it was confined by any strict law : laws in rude ages are sel- 
dom exact ; but the feudal chiefs, who held under the king, 
were in general so powerful, that the king could seldom do 
much in opposition to them, and was obliged to be guided very 
much by their wishes. In France, as I have already told you, 
a general assembly of the nation was anciently held every 
spring, at first in the month of March, afterward in May. 
The monarch was by the constitution greatly dependent on 
this assembly, though such a man as Charlemagne probably 
led it as he pleased. After Charlemagne, when the mon- 
archy was much weakened, and many nobles became more 
powerful than the crown, those nobles who thought themselvea 
too great to condescend to admit the king's authority in theii 
own domains, cared not to attend this national council, and i< 
accordingly fell gradually into decay. 

Philip the Fair, in whose time the crown bad gained * 



OcNV.J PHILIP IV. 17: 

very considerable and important ascendency over the nobles 
convened in 1302 what are properly called the states-general 
These states were composed, in the first place, of clergy, who 
took the precedency ; secondly, of nobles ; and, thirdly, of the 
deputies of the commons, or third estate, who now, for the 
first time, were assigned a regular place in this solemn and 
deliberative public assembly. Subsequent meetings of the , 
states-general were frequent till the year 1614, from which 
time they were discontinued till 1789, when they were again 
summoned at the eventful crisis of the Revolution. ' 

Ricliard. And what were the parliaments, as distinct 
from the states-general ? 

Mrs. M. The parliament of Paris appears to have em- 
anated from a supreme council, which, under the kings of the 
house of Capet, was composed of the immediate feudal vas- 
sals of the crown, the prelates and officers of the royal house- 
hold. This was the great judicial tribunal of the French 
crown. St. Louis made a considerable alteration in its con- 
stitution, and it acquired in his time the title of Parliament. 
Philip the Fair fixed its seat at Paris. The parliaments, in 
addition to their judicial functions, were employed to register 
and authenticate all the royal edicts, and assumed a right to 
remonstrate against, and in very many cases to delay, and in. 
some absolutely to refuse to register them. Charles V. per- 
mitted the members of the parliament to fill up vacancies in 
their body by election ; and though this privilege was resixmed 
afterward by the crown, yet it was restored by Louis XI. ^ 
who also appointed that they should retain their stations fbi 
life. Thus the parliaments acquired great power in the state, 
and preserved, even through the most despotic reigns, the form 
and memory of a comparatively free constitution. When the 
parliaments refused to register the king's edicts, the king was 
obliged to proceed in person to the place where they held their 
sittings, and insist on the registering them ; and the parlia- 
ments could not refuse this to the king in person. The king's 
seat on these occasions was on a sort of couch under a cano 
py ; and hence we often hear of his holding a bed of justice. 
Several of the provinces had also separate parliaments. Ther 
were parliaments of Toulouse, Rennes, Dijon, Grenoble, and 
other places. 

Mary. I don't see why the French nobles need havn 
teen so very angry, when the king made his goldsmith a no- 
Dleman. 

Mrs. M- Thi^y regarded it as a g)i''at infriiigemoiit oi 



thXJ PHILIP IV. [Chat. XVI 

the privileges of their i>rder. The French nobles were the 
proudest people in Europe, and, on account of their descent 
from the Franks, looked on themselves as a distinct and su 
perior class, possessing rights and dignities which could not 
lie shared by any other. Thus the king, although he might 
make Ralph the goldsmith a count, could not make him a 
descendant of the Franks ; and therefore, according to the 
notions entertained by the nobles, the goldsmith could not bo 
a genuine nobleman. I am told that this distinction between 
the descendants of the original nobility, and those whose fa- 
»nilies have been ennobled by the royal patents, is still, in 
some degree, kept up. These two different classes of no- 
bility are distinguished by the terms of the nobles and the 
ennobled. 

Richard. I think that was a tolerably peremptory law oi 
Philip's which " forbade all private wars till the king's wars 
were ended." 

Mrs. M. When the king's wars ivere ended, he rode full 
accoutered into the church of Notre Dame, and returned 
thanks at the altar for his victory over the Flemings. 

Mary. Do you mean, mamma, that he really rode on 
horseback into the church ? 

Mrs. M. He really did, and an equestrian statue was af- 
terward placed in the church, an exact representation of him 
and his horse. 

George. Pray, mamma, is that kind of high cap which 
popes are always drawn with called a tiara ? 

Mrs. M. Yes, my dear; and if you will examine one 
of these tiaras, you will observe that it is formed of three 
crowns, one above another. 

Richard. I should have thought one crown was enough 
to wear at a time. 

Mrs. M. Boniface VIII. surrounded the tiara with its 
first crown ; Benedict XII. assumed the second ; and John 
XXIII. added the third. The practice has been followed by 
all succeeding popes. 

Mary. WiJl you tell us, if you pbase, mamma, how the 
ladies in France used to dress at this time ? 

Mrs. M. The female dress was at this time wejj graceful 
It consisted of a tight bodice, made very high, and fitting the 
shape, over which was an open robe, trimmed either with 
gold or fur. The breadth and richness of the trimmmg de- 
pended on the rank of the wearer ; and there Were very strict 
laws bv which these thinos were regulated. 



IkjNT J PHILIP IV. I8t 

George. And pray, mamma, how were the men dressed 7 

Mrs. M. Persons of distinction had long tunics with 
cloaks over them. Short tunics, or jackets, were worn only 
by servants, excepting in a camp, and then they might be 
worn by gentlemen. The same laws wliich regulated the 
trimmings of the ladies regulated also the cloaks of the gen- 
tlemen, whose capes were cut, not " according to their cloth," 
but according to their rank. All ranks wore hoods, called 
chaperoThS, the size and shape of which were under exact reg- 
ulation. The nobles had them very large, and let them hang 
down the back ; and those of the common people were 
smaller, and shaped like a sugar-loaf, and were worn really 
to cover their heads. 

Mary. I think those laws about capes and trimmings 
must have been very foolish and troublesome. 

Mrs. M. Laws of this nature are called sumptuary laws. 
Philip IV. enacted a great number of them ; he not only 
regulated the expense of each dress, but also the number of 
dresses each person was to have. 

Richard. That was the most provoking of all. 

Mrs. M. I can tell you of another law, which you will 
perhaps think still more provoking. There was a law regu- 
lating the number of dishes which each person might have for 
dinner and supper. 

Ricliard. O I I don't think I should have minded about 
that, provided the dishes were not stinted in size as well as in 
number. 

Mrs. M. No person was to have more than one dish of 
?oup and two dishes of meat for dinner, and the same for 
supper. 

George. I thmk that was a very fair allowance for 
supper. 

Mrs. M. You must recollect that they dined at the very 
early hour of half-past eleven ; they therefore required a more 
solid supper than we do. The usual supper- hour was between 
four and five in the afternoon. 

Mary. If we had such laws about dinners and suppers in 
England, I suspect they wotJd not be very well kept. 

Mrs. M. To say the truth, the strictness of the law for- 
bidding many dishes was sometimes evaded by putting difler- 
ent sorts of meat into the same dish ; but the good folks of 
France were not long allowed to enjoy the benefit of -this 
ingenious contrivance, for the king afterwar i made a law lb' 
iv Iding it. 



182 PHILIP IV. [Chap. XVi 

George. I lon't vicnder the country was so full of discon- 
tents. I think the eld saying, of having " a finger in the 
pie," must have come from that over-meddling of king Philip 

Mrs. M. The French were always a comparatively ab- 
stemious people, and perhaps did not think tliese restrictions 
on their meals so very serious a grievance as you seem to do. 
They were always much fonder of show than of comfort ; and 
even so long ago as Philip the Fair's reign, the inferior gentry, 
who were generally very poor, would try to hide their poverty 
by external finery. The English, on the contrary, preferred 
good living to show. The English yeomanry of this period 
are said to have lived in mean houses, but to have kept plen 
tiful tables. In one respect, however, their houses were 
better than those of the French ; for the houses in England 
had the luxury of chimneys long before they were known in 
France. 

George. I was always sure that in all material things the 
English were much cleverer than the French. 

Mrs. M. The English might perhaps be cleverer in rn 
gard to chimneys, but the French beat them in glass windows:. 
The English were obliged to have French artificers to make 
all the glass windows in their older churches. Most of the 
finest painted glass in our cathedrals came from France. 
Glass was at first chiefly, if not solely, employed in both 
countries for religious buildings. It was not used in France 
in domestic architecture till the fourteenth century. 

When we were speaking of the laws made by Philip to 
restrict his subjects' dinners, I ought to have told you of a 
very singular custom which at this time prevailed in France. 

Mary. What was it, mamma ? 

Mrs. M. It was a custom for people to eat ofi' each other's 
plates, and this was thought so great a mark of politeness, 
that if a gentleman sat next a lady at table, he would have 
been thought very rude if he did not eat off' her plate. 

Geoi-ge. One would almost think that the poor souls were 
Etinted in plates as well as in dishes. 

Richard. Pray, mamma, shall we have the history of any 
more crusades ? 

Mrs. M. We have now come to the end of the crusades ; 
for though several of the succeeding popes tried to excite an- 
other, the princes of Europe were at length become too wise, 
and the crusade which was undertaken by St. Louis and oui 
Edward I. proved the last. 

Georg, ?. What becavne of all the Latins in Palestme ? 



A.U 1314.] 



LOUIS X. 



133 



3Irs. M. Their poAver dwindled away, till of all theii 
possessions in the East, the town of Acre alone remained to 
them. But although their power was gone, their pride and 
their ambition remained. Acre was taken by the Turks in 
1291 ; and even .while the Turks were storming their town, 
the Latins were occupied in contentions for the title of king. 
Some of the laiights escaped, and afterward possessed them- 
^3lves of the island of Rhodes ; the rest were massacred by 
the Turks ; and thus closes the history of the don: nion of the 
Latins in Syria. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

LOUIS X., SURNAMED HUTIN. PHILIP V., SURNAMEP THfl 
LONG. CHARLES IV., SURNAMED THE P^IR. 

[Years after Christ, 1314-1328.] 




Huntsman and Valet or Philip the Fair. (From their tombs.) 

These three brothers leigned one after the other in rapia 
succession, and all died in the prime of life, leaving no male 
heirs. As these reigns are very short, I think it best to place 
them in one chapter. 

To begin then with Louis surnamed Hutin, a word whicli 
some English historians translate " the Quarrelsome," and 
others "the Peevish" Too little is known of this king's 



184 LOUIS X. [Chap. XVII 

temper ana character to enable us to say how fai he dos3rved 
either of these opprobrious epithets ; but, judging by his con- 
duct daring tlie short time he reigned, we may reasonably 
believe that he was very covetous, and of a restless, lAnsettled 
humor. 

He was twenty-six years of age when he began to reigu. 
At first he allowed his uncle, Charlrs of Valois, to take tha 
chief direction of affairs. Charles's first act was to compas? 
the ruin of Enguerrand de Marigny, the late king's minister 
He caused him to bs accused of theft, and to be condemned 
and executed without having been permitted to speak in his 
own defense. The wife of de Marigny was also accused of 
conspiring to compass the king's death by magic, and was 
thrown into prison. 

After the lapse of many years, Charles of Valois became 
convinced of his injustice toward de Marigny, and repented 
bitterly of it. He at length endeavored also to make some 
reparation, the only reparation, indeed, which it was in his 
power to make. He restored all the forfeited estates of Ma- 
rigny to his children, and caused his body to be taken down 
from the gibbet where it had continued to hang, and to be 
honorably interred. This took place in the year 1325. I 
must now return to the beginning of the reign of Louis Hutin. 

Hostilities having again broke out between France and the 
Flemings, Louis was desirous of marching into Flanders ; but 
before he could do this, he found it necessary to replenish his 
coffers, which his father had left empty. 

Among other means of raising money, he issued a procla 
mation, offering to enfranchise all the serfs in the royal do- 
mains on their paying a certain sum. But the greater part 
of them preferred their money to their freedom. Louis then 
hit oil the singular expedient of forcing them to be free, 
whether they would or not, by making a ..aw to oblige them 
to purchase their enfranchisement. 

Having at last collected an army, he laid siege to Courlray ;* 
but the elements conspired against him. Such torrents of 
rain fell that the roads were rendered impassable, and it was 
scarcely possible even in the camp, to get from tent to tent 
without sinking up to the knees in mud. Provisions also be- 
gan to fail, and the king was obliged to raise the siege and 
return to France ; but he first burned all his baggage, which, 
on account of the state of the roads, he could not remove, to 
prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy, 

* In F landers 



A D. 1318.] PHILIP V 135 

In the following year Louis died suddenly. His death was 
At the time ascribed to poison ; but we may with much more 
reason attribute it to the effects of his own imprudence in 
drinking cold water after he had heated himself with playing 
at tennis in the Wood of Vincennes, and then sitting down lo 
rest himself in a damp grotto. He was seized soon afterward 
with a sudden chill, and died the next day. He was twenty- 
eight years old, and had reigned only nineteen months. He 
was twice married. By his first wife, Margaret, daught® 
of the duke of Burgandy, who died in prison, he had one 
daughter — 

Jane, queen of Navarre, who married the count d'Evreux. 

Louis, married, secondly, Clemence of Anjou, daughter 
of Charles Martel, king of Hungary. By her he had a 
posthumous child — 

John, who lived only eight days. 

When the king's death was known, a regency was ap 
pointed ; and on the death of the infant, Philip, the late 
king's next brother, ascended the throne, to the exclusion, 
according to the Salic law, of his daughter. Jane, however, 
Mas still heiress of the kingdom of Navarre, which had de- 
scended to her father from his mother, the queen of Navarre. 

The duke of Burgundy and the count d'Evreux seemed ai 
first determined to support the claims of Jane to the crown 
of France ; but the parliament having confirmed the law 
excluding females, and taken an oath to maintain Philip on 
the throne, all opposition was withdrawn ; and Philip secured 
the duke of Burgundy to his interests by giving him his 
daughter Jane in marriage. The young queen of Navarre 
was married to the count d'Evreux's eldest son, who by that 
means became king of Navarre. 

Philip reigned about six years ; the whole of which time 
proved, from different causes, a period of turbulence and dis- 
quietude. The king, we are told, was a man of good abilities, 
and desirous to remedy the disorders in the state ; but the 
seeds of evil were so deeply sown, and a lamentable corrup- 
tion of morals prevailed so generally, that his best endeavors 
availed but little. 

We are told that the crime of poisoning was at this time 
commoji in France. 

Philip made an attempt to reduce all the weights and 
measures throughout his kingdom to one general standard ; 
but he did not live to efl'3ct this beneficial regulation. Ho 
died of a lingering illness, at the castle of Vincennos, Januarv 



■{Sb CHARLES IV. tOiiAP XVU 

3, 1322, in the twenty-ninth year of his age! He married 
Jane, daughter and heiress of the count of Burgundy, and 
»f Mahaud, countess of Artois, and by her had one son and 
four daughters : — (1.) Louis, who died in his infancy. (2.) 
Jane, married Eudes IV., duke of Burgundy. (3.) Margaret, 
married Louis, earl of Flanders. (4.) Isabella, married the 
dauphin of Vienne. (5.) Blanch, a nun. 

The same law which had excluded the daughter of Loui? 
Hutin from the throne, now excluded the daughters of Phihp 
the Long ; and his brother Charles, surnamed the Fair, as- 
cended the throne without opposition. 

Money transactions in France (as also in England) were at 
this time chiefly carried on by natives of Lombardy. These 
people acquired prodigious wealth, and it was one of the first 
acts of Charles's reign to seize on their effects, and drive them 
all out of his kingdom. 

England was at this time in a state of great anarchy. 
Edward I., who had ruled with a powerful hand, was dead, 
and was succeeded by Edward II., a weak prince, who 
suffered himself to be governed by his favorites. He had 
married Isabella, Charles's sister ; and on a revival of the 
old claim of doing homage for .Guienne, Edward sent his 
queen to France to accommodate this affair with her brother. 
Charles agreed to excuse Edward from appearing personally, 
and to receive the homage of the yomig prince of "Wales in- 
stead. Isabella, when she had got her son with her in Paris, 
was in no hurry to return to England. She collected about 
her several English exiles, and some nobles who had left 
their country in disgust. She made Edmund Moitimer her 
favorite and confidant, and, planning to overthrow the weak, 
infatuated Edward, solicited aid of her brother foi that pur- 
pose. But Charles entirely disapproved of her conduct, and 
not only refused to give her any assistance, but desired her to 
quit France. I need not here say how Isabella went on, nor 
relate to you the imprisonment and death of her husband. 

About this time Flanders was in a very unsettled state 
I have already told you that the Flemings were a turbulent 
and changeable people. They were rich, and aspired at in- 
dependence, which caused a perpetual struggle between them 
and their rulers. In the course of a few years they often 
changed masters, and the peace between France and Flanders 
was, during the same period of time, often broken and re- 
newed. 

In 1325 died Charles of "\''alois. It has been sail of him, 



Cos v.: .>OUIS X.— PHILir v.— CHARLES IV. im 

as of our own John of Gaunt, that he was the son, the 
brother, the uncle, ar.d the father of kings, but was never 
a king himself. His disorder, which I have already said 
was of the mind, and occasioned by remorse, completely 
baffled his physicians, " who could not minister to a mina 
■Jiseased." It was therefore attributed to magic, which was 
at that time the convenient way of accounting for every 
unknown disorder. 

On Clmstmas eve, 1327, the king was seized with a vio- 
lent illness, which, in a few weeks, terminated his life. He 
died in the thirty-third year of his age and fifth of his reign 
He was married three times : first, to Blanch ©f Burgimdy, 
whom he divorced ; secondly, to Mary of Luxemburg, sister 
to Henry VII., emperor of Germany ; and lastly, to Jane 
d'Evreux, by whom he had two daughters : — (1.) Mary, who 
died young, a few years after her father ; (2.) Blanch, a 
posthumous claild, mari-ied Philip, son of Philip of Valois. • 

As Blanch was not bom till some months after the king's 
death, a regency was appointed ; but when the expected child 
proved a daughter, Philip of Valois, the late king's cousin, 
assumed the crown, as being the nearest male heir. 



TABLE I. OF THE FAMILY OF CAPET. 
Pegar. to reign 

987 Hugh Capet. 

996 Robert. 
1031 HPTiry L 
1060 Philip L 
1106 Louis VL, le Gros. 
1137 Louis VII., le Jeune. 
1180 Philip IL, Augustus. 
1223 Louis VIII., the Lion. 
1226 Louis IX., le Saint. 
1270 Philip III., le Hardi. 
1286 Philip IV., le Bel, also king of Navan-e. 
1314 Louis X., Hutin, also king of NavaiTe, ) 

1316 PhiUp v., le Long, } sons of Philip le BeL 

^322 Charles IV., le Bel, ) 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XVII. 

Richard. In what way was it pretended that the wife 
cf Marigny tried to take away the king's life by magic ? 

Mrs. Markha7ii. She was accused of having made a wax 
image of the king, which she placed in a gentle heat so that 
it would melt gradually ; and it was supposed that, by means 
of her magical incantations, the king would waste away by 



rSS LOUIS X.— PHILIP v.— CHAKLES IV. IChi.p. XVII. 

degrees as the image melted, and that when the last atom 
of wax dissolved he would expire. 

Richard. The belief in magic was a fine thing for the 
physicians ; it must have saved them a great deal of trouble 
in studying the nature of disorders. 

Mrs. M. I omitted to mention among the events of the 
last reign, that the Jews had to endure a more severe persecu- 
tion than they had axex before experienced. The pretext was 
i.hat they had entered into a plot with the Turks to destroy all 
the people of France, by poisoning the springs of water. 

Ricliai'd. They must have been very clever Jews to have 
managed that. 

Mrs. M. The lepers also were implicated in the charge, 
and were accused of endeavoring to spread their loathsome 
disease. Consequently their hospitals or lazar-houses were 
stripped and pillaged. As for the Jews, they were deprived 
of all their possessions, and then banished from France. 

George. This is very like the story of the Jews in England 
It would have been much more honest if king Philip of France, 
and our king John, had said to the Jews at once, " We want 
your money, and we ivill have it," instead of calumniating 
them as well as robbing them. 

Mrs. M. It would have been more honest still, if they 
had left the Jews in peaceable possession of their property. 

Ridiard. I have been looking at the map of Paris, and 
I see there are other islands in the Seine besides the one wo 
used to call " the little old island." 

Mrs. M. There were formerly more than there are now 
for by means of bridges and quays, some of those have been 
joined that lie nearest together. The one you see, named 
the isle Louviers, was formerly covered with a grove of elms, 
and is now occupied as a timber and wood yard. The isle 
of Saint Louis was formerly a bleaching-ground, and was the 
place where the Parisians celebrated festive games. It is 
now joined to the isle of Notre Dame, and they form together 
one island, which is covered with buildings. 

Mary. Does the king still inhabit the palace in the old 
island ? 

Mrs. M. Louis Hutin was the last monarch who resided 
in that palace. He gave it up to the use ci the public : the 
courts of justice are held in it ; and it goes by the name of 
Le Palais de Justice. 

Mary. Then where does the king of France live when ha 
comes to Paris ? 



CoNV] LOUIS X.— PHILIP v.— CHARLES IV, ]8* 

Mrs. M. The palace of the Tuileries, which wast buill 
in 1564 by Catherine de Medicis, is the present habitation 
of the royal family. From the time of Louis Hutin till the 
Tuileries were built, the Louvre was, I believe, the favorite 
residence of the French kings. 

George. I remember you told us, that in old times, when 
the king came to Paris, the citizens were obliged to send thei. 
furniture to the palace. I hope, when he went away, thej 
got all their things again. 

Mrs. M. I hope they did. There is still extant a very 
curious letter from Philip Augustus, desiring that the old 
straw, with which the floors of the palace was strewed, may 
se given for the good of his soul to the use of the poor in the 
"House of God."* 

RicJiard. What was the House of God ? and what use 
could be made of the old, dirty straw ? 

Mrs. M. The House of God was an hospital for the sick, 
and the straw was probably used for the poor creatures to lie 
upon ; and I dare say it was very thankfidly received, for the 
hospital was, at that time, so ill supplied with beds, that a 
statute was made, exacting, that on the death of every canon 
of Notre Dame, his bed should go to the hospital. 

Mary. Then I hope in tiiAe they had plenty of beds, and 
comfortable ones too. 

Mrs. M. They had, indeed, plenty of beds at last, but I fear 
not very comfortable ones ; for, owing to the great increase in 
the size of Paris, the number of sick persons who were sent tc 
this hospital was so great, that the rooms were crowded to 
excess. Beds were placed one above another, and those at 
the top could only be reached by the help of ladders ; and 
even in these wretched, close, suffocating beds, the sick were 
huddled, five and six together — ^persons with all disorders, and 
even the dying with the dead. At last the state of the hos- 
pital was such, that to send a patient there was almost send- 
ing him to certain death. 

Mary. Poor creatures I it would have been better for them 
to have staid and died quietly at home. 

Mrs. M. 1\\ the reign of Louis XVI. an inquiry was 
made into the state of this hospital, and the king was arrang- 
ing a plan for some additional buildings, when the tumult ol" 
the revolution put an end to his benevolent designs. 

George. This is another reason for disliking that horrible 
French revolution. 

Maisoii de Dieu 



rao 



LOUTS X.— PHILIP V— CHxVRLES IV. [Chap. XVIJ 



Mrs. M. Happily for the poor wretches in the House or 
God, the revolution was productive of benefit to them ; foT 
when the religious orders were abolished, some of the con- 
vents were appropriated to the use of the hospital, and the 
sick are now (whether or no by fair means, I do not say) 
comfortably lodged, and the difierent classes of patients are 
kept separate. 

Ridiard. You once told' us something about the Wood 
of Vincennes, and I have quite forgot what it was. 

Mrs. M. I told you that it was a park close to Paris, and 
that it was inclosed by Pliihp Augustus. He built a hunting 
palace in the park. King Henry V. of England, resided in it 
when he was master of Paris, and died there. 

Richard. Is there a palace there now ? 

Mrs. M. There is a castle, or chateau, which has been 
greatly enlarged and beautified since those times. It was a 
favorite residence of many of the French kings till the time 
of Louis XI. He was, as you will hear when we come to his 
reign, a very wicked man, and his cruelties converted the 
chateau of Vincennes. from a house of pleasure into a house 
of misery, and after his time it was used as a state prison, a 
few apartments bemg alone reserved for the occasional accom 
modation of the royal family. 




ViNCENNSS 



OoNv.f LOUIS X.— PHILIP v.— CHARLES IV 191 

Mary. It was a strange, uncomfortable plan, to mako 
prisons and palaces all in one 

Mrs. M. The donjon tower of Vincennes, which is the 
oldest part of the building, contained several dungeons, some 
of which had no daylight whatever ; and the stone beds which 
the prisoners lay on may stiU. be seen. 

Mary. I hope no prisoners are ever confined there now. 

Mrs. M. During the time of Bonaparte it contained sev- 
eral prisoners ; but now the donjon tower is used as a depot 
for gunpowder, and the rest of the palace is converted into a 
manufactory for porcelain. The most interesting thing to 
me at Vincennes would be the old oak, which is still standing, 
under which St. Louis used to sit to hear the petitions of the 
poor. 

Ricliard. Pray, mamma, will you be so kind as to ex- 
plain what sort of thmg the jubUee was which pope Boniface 
ordered to be celebrated once every hundred years ? 

Mrs. M. It was a plenary indulgence, or in other Avords, 
it was a full pardon of sins to all persons who should in this 
appointed year make a pilgrimage to Rome. The concourse 
of pilgrims to the first jubilee was so great, that it was 
called the golden year. The period was afterward short- 
ened to fifty years by pope Clement VI., who lived in 1350, 
and who was wilhng to come in for one of these golden 
harvests. Later popes have, for the same reason, found it 
convenient to shorten the period to twenty-five years ; giving 
as a reason, that, by this change, every person may reason- 
ably hope to enjoy the benefit of the jubilee at least once in 
their lives. 

George. Are there any jubilees at Home now ? 

Mrs. M. One was celebrated in 1825, but it was a great 
failing off from the jubilees of old times, being attended by 
only seventy-two pilgrims. 

Mary. And what did they do when they got to Bome ? 

Mrs. M. They received their plenary indulgences from 
the pope, Leo XII., and afterward went in procession to hear 
mass in St. Peter's church. When they returned, they dined 
in one of the halls of the Vatican with his holiness, who 
helped them with his own hands, and dmed with them at 
the same table. 

George. That would be a very comfortable way of get- 
ting absolved of our sins, if we could but make our consciencea 
keep quiet. 

Mrs M. In former days, when people were very ignorant, 



1»2 



PHILIP VI 



Cha,' XVIII 



and consequently very superstitious, ;here were various corH' 
fortable ways of getting absolution for sin. Some people, 
who w^ere rich and could afibrd it, allowed their confessors 
an annual stipend to absolve them from all their sins for the 
year. 

Richard. I should like to know whether these stipends 
were paid beforehand. 

Mrs. M. Some people, instead of buying absolution bj the 
year, thought it better to try the efficacy of a rod, and used to 
undergo regular castigations from the hands of their confessors. 
St. Louis, who followed very rigorously the superstitious ob- 
servances of his times, always kept a rod by him, and used to 
appiy it to his own person as occasion ofiered, or as he thought 
he deserved it. 



CHAPTEE. XVIII, 

PHILIP VI. OF VALOIS, SURNAMED THE FORTUNATE. 
[Years after Christ, 1328 -1350.J 




JOHH DK MONTFORD AND HIS CoUNTESS. CbaRLBS DK BloML 



I HAVE already told you in the last chapter, that on the 
leaih of Charles llie Fair, his cousin Phihp, count of Valois 



A.D. 1328 J PHILIP VI. lD!i 

was appointed regent. When the queen-dowager' a expected 
child proved a daughter, Phihp was declared king by the peers 
and the states-general. He was crowned at Rheims, in the 
thirty-fifth year of his age ; and from the circumsta.nces of hia 
thus obtaining a crown, was called the Fortunate. But few 
monarchs, as you will see in the sequel, have less merited that 
epithet. He was impetuous, rash, selfish, and. of a suspicious 
temper. He was, however, a man of great personal bravery, 
d,nd this appears to have been his only merit. 

Edward III. of England, whose mother, you Imow, was 
daughter of Philip the Fair, pretended to claim through her a 
right to the crown of France, contending that although, ac- 
cording to the Salic law, a woman could not inherit tho 
crown, she might yet transmit a right to it to her son. 

He, however, dissembled for a time his ambitious designs 
and appeared to acquiesce in Philip's claim, by doing homage 
to him for Guienne. But still he never lost sight of this his 
tavorite project, and long before he could execute it, began se- 
cretly to lay his measures. He collected a great quantity of 
warlike stores, and formed alliances with John de Montford, 
duke of Bretagne, and wdth the Flemings. Both the Flem- 
ings and de Montford were at that time at war with France, 
Philip having espoused the cause of the earl of Flanders, 
against whom his subjects had rebelled, and also that of 
Charles de Blois, who had married the daughter of an elder 
brother of de Montford, and disputed with him the possession 
of the duchy of Bretagne. 

In 1 33 G Edward openly set himself to prosecute his claim 
to the French crown. He prevailed on his allies, the Flem- 
ings, to proclaim him king of France, and swear fealty to 
him. On this occasion also he assumed the arms of France, 
three fleurs-de-lis, and quartered them with the arms of Eng- 
land, on his seal and shield. They continued to form part of 
the royal arms of England till the folly of assuming them was 
at length abandoned in the reign of George III. 

Philip assembled a great fleet, which sailed up and down 
the Chamrel, and did great mischief to the English commerce 
It was encountered by the English fleet off" Sluys, and a des 
perate battle was fought, in which the French were defeated 

In 1342 a truce was agreed upon between the two kinga, 
and Pliilip proclaimed a tournament at Paris, with the hope 
of drawing there several Breton noblemen, whom he suspected 
of favoring the cause of Edward. When he had succeeded 
ui getting them into his power, he caused them to be behead- 

I 



■194 iHlLlP VI (CiiAP XVli; 

ea, without either trial or sentence— an act of injustice arJ 
wickedness, of which, during the remainder of his life, he had 
ample reason to repent. "In this manner, says Mezerai^ 
■' did this too severe and revengeful king alienate the affec- 
tions of his nobles, who, in consequence, served him hut ill in 
his hour of need. ' 

Edward, regarding the death of the Breton nohles as an 
infraction of the truce, immediately renewed the war. lis 
sent the earl of Derby to attack the dominions of Philip on 
the side of Guienne, while he himself landed on the coast 
of Normandy with about 40,000 men. Meeting with no 
opposition, he marched through the comitry almost to the 
gates of Paris, destroying and pillaging every where by the 
way. 

Edward's army was not sufficiently numerous to allow him 
to penetrate far into France for any considerable length oi 
time, and he soon retired toward Ponthieu with the intentioj 
of joining the Flemings, having first defied Philip to singl*. 
combat. This defiance, however, Philip did not accept 
Having summoned all the vassals of his kingdom, and assem 
bled a immerous army, he pursued Edward with all haste 
burning with resentment toward that audacious monarch 
who had thus braved him even at the walls of his capital. 
When he arrived near the mouth of the Somme, he learneo 
that the English were encamped on the plain of Cressy.* 

Philip was so impatient to be revenged on the English, 
that he was with difficulty prevailed on to give his weariea 
eoldiers a night's rest at Abbeville. His army was so nu- 
merous that he could with ease have surrounded the English 
camp, and starved it into a surrender ; but he rejected with 
disdain the advice given him that he should do so, and the 
next morning, the 26th of August, 1346, he sounded his 
trumpets, and set forward to battle. Abbeville is five miles 
from Cressy, and Philip urged on his troops with such incon- 
venient speed that, when they arrived in sight of the enemy, 
they were heated, out of breath, and in disorder ; while the 
English were seated on the ground, in order of battle, tran- 
quilly waiting their approach. At sight of the French army 
the English sprang up and made ready their arms. 

When Philip saw this formidable and prepared phalanx, 
he gave orders that the horsemen should halt, and that the 
archers, who were Genoese mercenaries, should advance to 
the front. But there was no discipline or subordination The 

" North of Abbeville, near the moi th of the Somme. 



A.D. 1346.] PHILIP VI. 195 

horsemen wciild not obey the order, and the lung's brother, 
the duke of Alencon, declared the Genoese unworthy to have 
the post of honor. The offended Genoese would not reUnquish 
their ground, and forgetting that they were in the face of the 
enemy, they and the horsemen began to fight with one an^ 
other. During their contention a violent shower of rain fell. 
The English, cool and collected, put their bows into their 
cases, but the Genoese were too much disordered to take that 
precaution. The consequence was, that when order was re- 
stored, and the archers were commanded to commence the 
attack, they found their bow-strings spoiled by the rain, and 
that the arrows fell short of their mark. The duke of Alen 
con observing this, and being inflamed with passion, believed 
\t to be done with design ; and calling out " Treason, trea- 
son !" commanded his men to ride over the Genoese, and 
drive them off the field. 

The rout being thus begun by the French themselves, there 
was an end of all order and command in the whole army. 
Each man pressing forward, they overset one another ; and 
those who were down could not rise because of the press. The 
English, meanwliile, stood firmly together, and discharged 
such thick and steady flights of arrows, that they made a 
dreadful havoc. The battle began at four in the afternoon, 
and raged till ten at night, when 40,000 French were left 
dead upon the field. Among them was the king of Bohemia. 
M^ho, though blind, had still desired to be conducted into thf 
battle, that he might "strike one stroke against the enemy." 
He was led by two of his nobles, who, tying the reins of hia 
horse's bridle to the bridles of their own, galloped, with him 
between them, into the midst of the combat. Their three 
bodies were found with their horses tied together, and a small 
stone cross still marks the spot where they fell. 

Philip, although he saw the battle was lost, would not quit 
the field till he was forced from it, by his attendants, and then, 
riding under cover of the darkness, he reached the walls of a 
neighboring town, and demanded to have the gates opened to 
him. The governor refused to admit him till he knew who 
he was, not imagining it could be the king, who was arrived 
like a fugitive ; but when Philip replied, that " he was the 
fortmies of France," the gates were immediately opened tt> 
him. But he could scarcely make his way through the nurn 
bers of people who came flocking about him, weeping and bfc 
wailing in so distressful a manner, that he was obliged to try 
to console them a!) bnst he could. The next day the English 



IStV rWILIP VI. LCHiP. XMIl 

•tontinued the j ursuit of their flying enemy, and it is said thai 
the slaughter exceeded that of the day preceding. 

Edward's next enterprise was to besiege Calais, which wag 
at last reduced by famine, and surrendered August 29, 1347, 
after a siege of eleven months. Edward turned out all the 
inhabitants, and peopled the town with his own subjects. 
Phihp recompensed the brave citizens, as well as he could, 
for the fortitude and loyalty they had displayed during the 
siege 

Soon after this, a dreadful pestilence, which equaUy deso 
la ted both England and France, made the two raonarchs de- 
sirous of peace. Edward, however, retained Calais, as well 
as several places which the earl of Derby had gained in 
Guienne. 

In 1350, Phihp was seized with a violent illness, which 
soon terminated his life, in the fifty-seventh year of his age, 
and the twenty-third of his reign. lie was twice married : 
by his first wife, Jane of Burgundy, he had two sons and a 
daughter : — 

(1.) John, duke of Normandy, who succeeded his father; 
(2.) Philip, duke of Orleans ; (3.) Mary, duchess of Brabant. 

Phihp's second wife was Blanch, grand-daughter of Louis X. 
of Navarre : by her he had Jane, who was a posthumous cliild. 

In the latter end of this reign, the dauphin of Vienne hav- 
ing caused the death of his only chUd by letting him fall out 
of a window, was so inconsolable for liis misfortune, that he 
retired from the world into a monastery, and sold his territo- 
ries to Phdip, on condition that the eldest son of the kings of 
France should, in future, bear the title of dauphin. 

Philip purchased Roussillon and Cerdagne, with the town 
of MontpelUer, of the king of Aragon. He inherited Maine 
and Anjou from liis mother, who was a daughter of Charles 
the Lame, king of Naples. The dominions of the crown of 
France acquired thus an extension which compensated for its 
losses in the wars with England. 

The people during this reign were greatly distressed by im- 
posts and taxes, more particularly by a tax called Gabelle, the 
levying of which occasioned great discontents. 

The province of Bretagne was in a very disturbed state 
during the greater part of this reign. John de Montford fell 
into the hands of the king, who imprisoned him in the Lou- 
vre. During his imprisonment his wife, Margaret of Flan- 
ders, a woman of a masculine spirit, took upon herself tho 
direction of aflairs. She sent her young son lor safety to 



Cos v.] PHILIP VL IJW 

England , and clothing herself in armor, and mounting a 
war-horse, she was, as Froissart says, " as good as a man.'' 
She was, nevertheless, driven from all her strong holds, ex 
cepting the little town of Hennehon,* where she shut herself 
up, and awaited succors from England. The succors, though 
promised, were long in coming, and the countess hegan to de- 
spair ; but before she could determine to surrender, she mount- 
ed a high tower, and took one more look at the sea. There 
she saw some distant sails which proved to be those of a fleet 
from England, under the command of Sir Walter Manny, 
who, landing with his troops, beat off' the enemy, and deliv- 
ered the countess from peril. She met Sir Walter as he en- 
tered the town, and (I use the words of the chronicle) " kissed 
him and his captains like a brave and valiant lady as she 
was." 

After several ti"uces and renewals of war between the par 
ties of de Montford and Blois, the former died in 1345 ; and 
the latter was, in 1347, taken prisoner, with his two sons. 
His wife, who was both courageous and ambitious, collected 
the scattered forces of her friends, and supported her hus- 
band's party against the countess de Montford. But although 
thus the war was still carried on between these two female 
warriors, nothing decisive was done. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XVIH. 

Kicliard. What kind of tax was the Gabelle ? 

Mrs. Markham. The mere word itself signifies any kind 
of tax or rent, but in the French history it commonly means 
a tax on salt, which was the more oppressive, because it be- 
came at last a monopoly. 

Richard. How was it made a monopoly ? 

Mrs. M. All the salt that was made in France was 
brought to the royal warehouses, and was from thence sold 
to the people at whatever price the king and his ministers 
chose to fix : and as salt may be considered one of the 
necessaries of life, this tax was feit by every description of 
persons. 

George. I don't call that so much a tax as a cheat. 

liiciiard. And did all the kings of France keep on selling 
salt? 

Near L'Oriont. on the southern coast of Bretaime. 



198 PHILIP VI. [(-^HAp. XVIIl 

Mrs. M. In all the latter reig^.s tlie Gabelle, as well as 
all the othci taxes in France, was farmed. 

Mary. Farm a tax I mamma, that is very puzzling. 

Mrs. M. To farm a tax is to pay so much to the king foi 
the privilege of receiving all the money collected by it. I be- 
lieve the French farmers of taxes made very good bargains ; 
for they commonly became very rich, and, in consequence, 
were very obnoxious to the poor, who looked upon their wealth 
as taken from their own pockets. 

Ricliard. But was not some of it taken from the pockets 
of the rich ? 

Mrs. M. Not from those of the nobles ; for they were ex- 
empted from taxation, which made it fall doubly heavy upon 
the lower orders. I must not omit to tell you a wittici^ 
which is recorded of our king Edward III. You know that 
ml is Latin for salt, and when he heard that Philip had 
levied a tax on salt, he called him the inventor of the Salic 
law. 

George. I suppose that dreadful pestilence you just now 
mentioned was the same you spoke of in your other history, 
and which I remember you said was called the black death. 

Mrs. M. You are quite right. This dreadful disorder 
first made its appearance in the year 1346, in the kingdom 
of Cathay, the ancient name of China. By degrees it spread 
over all the then known world, visiting first Constantinople. 
Egypt, and Greece. From thence it passed over into Eu- 
rope, and traveled northward, till, in 1348, it reached France 

Mary. And did the people of one country begin to be ill 
as soon as those of another got well ; or were they all ill to 
gether ? 

Mrs. M. The disorder seemed to quit oiie countiy as soon 
as it reached another, and to make a very regular progress. 
It commonly lasted about five months in each. The people 
in general, believing that all medicines were vain, took no 
precautions, either to abate its violence or to prevent in- 
fection. 

George. Then hov/ was it ever stopped ? 

Mrs. M. It only stopped on the borders of the Frozen 
Sea. In Russia it carried off the whole of the royal family. 
There is one circumstance relative to this black death so very 
extraordinary that I can not forbear relating it, although it 
has nothing to do with the history of France. You know 
that, a great many centuries ago, a colony from Denmark in- 
habited a part of the caast of West Greenlard. They built 



> . , i'HILIP VI. VJU 

nouses j«.A I cfiurclies, and even had a bishop. Tht country 
was, howevwr, very unproductive, and the colcmy was annu- 
ally supplied with necessaries from Denmark. But in the 
year 1349 the pestilence caused so great a mortality among 
the Danish seamen, that none survived who were acquainted 
with the navigation to West Greenland. The colony was 
therefore deprived of its usual resources. 

Mary. What became of the poor creatures ? 

Mrs. M. No one knows. West Greenland, ever since 
that time, has never been visited by Europeans. We are 
even ignorant whether or not there are any existing descend- 
ants of the Danish settlers. 

George. Why don't some of our sailors go and see ; there 
is no black death now to prevent them. 

Mrs. M. But there are now as great difhculties to over- 
come. An insurmountable barrier of ice has formed along 
the coast, which prevents all access to it. Many attempts 
have at different times been made to reach the ancient settle- 
ment. In the reign of queen Ehzabeth, our famous navigator, 
Frobisher, was sent with a squadron for that purpose, but aU 
in vain ; neither he, nor any subsequent navigator, has been 
able to approach the shore, and our sailors can only see, or 
fancy they see, beyond the barrier of impassable ice, a long 
line of coast, on which they think they can perceive some- 
thing like the ruins of buildings. 

George. If I were they, I would go to the other side, to' 
East Greenland, and would get to the western shores over 
land. 

Mis. 31. That has also been attempted. A king of 
Denmark, in the early part of the last century, sent out an 
expedition, provided with horses and sledges, to explore the 
country between the two shores ; but when the expedition got 
a short way into the interior, they found that the country, as 
far as could be seen, presented nothing but an immense plain 
of ice, intersected by impassable chasms, and that it was ut- 
terly impossible to proceed. 

George. O ! if I had but wings, you should soon know 
what was become of those Danes in West Greenland. But 
this is talking nonsense ; so, if you please, mamma, we had 
Dest go back to France. 

RicJiard. Pray, mamma, are the French well oft' in his- 
tories of their own country ? 

Mrs. M. They have, I believe, a great many more than 
my limited information can tell you of. I btJieve that one 



21,0 THILIP VI Chap. XVIli 

9f the best is that by Velly, with a continuation by VillaiBt 
jL have been exceedingly entertained and instructed by a liis- 
tory, not yet completed, written by M. Sismondi, a very dis* 
tinguished author. I confess also I have a great liking foi 
old Mezerai, a very naif and honest-hearted historian, and 
who has the merit with me of not being too philosophical. 

Riclmrd. And when did this unphilosophical old gentle 
man live ? 

Mrs. M. He lived in the time of Louis XIV., and many 
whimsical anecdotes are related of him. It was one of his 
fancies always to sit by candlelight even in the lightest and 
brightest days in summer. He also loved singularity in his 
dress, and often wore very shabby clothes. Once, when he 
was traveling, his carriage broke down ; he left his servants 
to get it repaired, and walked on alone to the nearest town. 
Here his dress exciting observation, he was about to be taken 
ap as a vagrant. He was highly diverted at the mistake, 
and only very civilly requested of the people who were going 
to take him before the magistrate, that they would be so 
obhging as to wait till his equipage should arrive. 

George. I think they would take him for a madman. 

Mrs. M. Luckily the arrival of the carriage finished the 
adventure. 

Richard. Have you not a history of France also by a M. 
Henault ? 

Mrs. M. Henault was president of the chamber of re- 
quests in Paris, and during a long life enjoyed the highest 
reputation for virtue and wisdom. He was forty years ii 
writing his short chronological abridgement of French liis 
tory. 

George. It must be owned that the good man did not 
hurry himself. 

Mrs. M. He verified the old saying of " slow and sure ;" 
and though his history, if we may call it so, is not lively, it 
may yet be rehed on for its accuracy. That is more than 
can be said for a history by Father Daniel, which is said to 
contain ten thousand blunders. 

Richard. I think it must have required some patience to 
count them. 

Mis. M. When Daniel was writing his history, the 
king's librarian sent him a great mass of valuable records 
and royal letters, thinking that they would be useful to him , 
but he sent them all back, saymg that he had no patience to 
look over them, and that he was sure he could m.ike a von 



CoNV.l PHILIP VI 20i 

readable liisto/y without plaguing himself with such papei 
rubbish. 

Mary. Ah, mamma., if you could get some of that paper 
rubbish, how many entertaining, and I dare say curious sto> 
ries you would find for us ! 

Mrs. M. I have no doubt but that I shall still be able to 
find for you many entertaining stories. French literature is 
singularly rich in private memoirs, which often give us more 
insight than graver histories into the manners, customs, and 
ways of thinking, in the different periods in which they were 
written. 

Ricliard. I don't think there is any thing more curious 
in history than the change of opinion. One should think that 
right and wrong must be always the same, and yet how dif- 
ferently people think of it ! 

Mrs. M. The change of opinion may generally be traced 
to the progress of knowledge ; the more the human under- 
standing is cultivated, the more it is enlarged, and the bettei 
able to discern good from evil. 




A Crosbbow-Man. 
Aon on (di picture of th« battle of Cnesy 

I* 



CHAPTER XIX. 

JOHN, SUENAMED THE GOOD 
[Years after Christ 1350-13(j4,] 




Kino John. 



The Earl or Alenjon, killed at CRKsar 



John, who was forty years of age when he ascended the 
throne, had already had great experience in mihtary affairs, 
and had, on several occasions, shown an extraordinary degree of 
personal bravery. It is prohable that to this quality, at all 
times so captivating to the French people, he owed his sur- 
name of " the Good ;" for he does not seem to have been any 
otherwise entitled to it. He was passionate and vindictive, 
and by his impetuosity and willfulness brought his kingdom to 
the verge of ruin. It might indeed by said of him that ho 
was frank and honorable ; but his honor was a mere high- 
flown, chivalrous principle, and not that true honor which is 
iust as well as generous. 

John began his reign with an act of flagrant injustice 
lie put the constable d'Eu and some other nobles to death, on 
lt;3 bare suspicion that they had intelligence v/itli the En- 
glisn. He then conferred the ofiice of constable, with the 
earldom of Angouleme, on one of his favorites. This act 
brought upon him the resentment of the king of Navarre 



A D. 135G.] JOHN 203 

who W£is indignant that the earldom was not bestowed on 
himself. 

Charles, king of Navarre, was the son of Philip d'Evreux, 
and of Jane, queen of Navarre, daughter of Louis X. He 
inherited from his father very considerable territories in Nor- 
mandy, and but for the Salic law, which had excluded his 
mother from the throne, would have been king of France. 
His sister had married, the late king, and he was himself mar- 
ried to one of the daughters of the reigning monarch. His 
youth had been chiefly spent in the French court, and he was 
distinguished above all the princes of his time for his courtly 
address, and for his excellence in all knightly accomplish- 
ments. He was bold, liberal, and eloquent ; quahties, as Me 
zerai observes, which are admirable when joined to virtue, but 
which are pernicious when they accompany a bad heart, as 
they increase the means of doing harm. It seemed, indeed, 
as if this was the only use , which Charles made of his fine 
qualities ; for he was cruel, unforgiving, and artful, to the 
last degree. He seemed, to love wickedness for its own sake, 
and was deservedly distinguished by the name of Charles the 
Bad. 

Not long after the new constable had been invested in his 
office, he was murdered in his bed by orders of the king of 
Navarre, who took no pains to conceal his crime, but, on the 
contrary, boasted of it openly. Charles was cited before the 
peers of France to answer for the murder ; but Jolin wanted 
either the courage or the power to punish him openly. He 
therefore had recourse to artifice. A grand entertainment was 
given at Rouen,* in 1356, on the king's eldest son being 
invested with the duchy of Normandy. Charles the Bad was 
invited, and John entered the castle with some armed men, 
who seized on Charles and his attendants as they were sitting 
at table. Charles was closely confined in chateau Gaillard,| 
and some of his attendants were put to death. 

I told you, at the close of the last reign, that one of the last 
acts of Phihp of Valois was to conclude a truce with England, 
if truce it could be called, for there still subsisted a kind of 
warfare between the soldiers of each nation, who were per- 
petually engaged in trials at arms with one another. The 
inhabitants of every town and village were obliged to keep 
themselves well defended and constantly upon the watch, that 
tbev might protect themselves from the attack of the twc 

* In the eastern part of Normandy. 
\ See page 62. 



20'4 JOHN. i Chap. XIX 

contending paitios, and also from the numbers oi" disbanied 
soldiers, who had enlisted in bands and called themselves free 
companies, roving about the country, owning no masters but 
their own captams, and committing dreadful devastations 
wherever they came. These people even threatened the town 
of Avignon, and the pope was obliged to purchase his safety 
with a large sura of money. 

The truce with England, such as it was, lasted tiU 1356. 
Edward construed the imprisonment of Charles of Navarre 
into an infringement of it, and the war, which had been but 
lU-smothered, again broke out. Edward the Black Prince, 
eldest son of the king of England, had the year before been 
invested by liis father with the duchy of Guienne.* Not 
content to keep within the hmits of his own duchy, he invad- 
ed John's territories, and overran the neighboring country. 
John hastily assembled a numerous army, and came up with 
the Black Prince near Poitiers.f The prince, seeing his 
retreat cut off, and that the French army was more than 
twice his own numbers, was willing to surrender on any hon- 
orable conditions; but John would agree to nothing but an 
imconditional surrender. The Black Prince, therefore, re- 
solved to defend himself to the last moment, and encamped 
his little army on the most advantageous spot he could find. 

This was a small plain, surrounded, except on one side, by 
vineyards and thick hedges. The prince, having hastily 
thrown up some ditches and trenches to strengthen the na- 
tural defenses of his position, quietly awaited the approach of 
the enemy. The French king was eager to commence the 
attack ; but the pope's legate, cardinal Perigord, who was in 
the French camp, was very anxious to prevent the effusion 
of blood. The armies came in sight of one another on Satur- 
day, September 17, 1356; and the whole of the Sunday the 
cardinal was occupied in riding from one camp to the other, 
endeavormg to persuade each party to consent to reasonable 
terms. But John remained willfully bent to exact an entire 
submission on the part of the prince, and Edward would agree 
to nothing that he thought would compromise his honor. 
John, blinded by passion, insisted on an immediate battle : 
but the day being by that time far advanced, he was at last 
persuaded to remain in his quarters till the morning. 

Early the next day the two armies made themselves ready 
for battle. The French were in three divisions. la the first 

* In the southwestern part of Frame. 

+ In the proviiK-e ofPoitou, north &^ Guienne. 



t356.] JOHN. % i 

were the king's three eldest sons, the liauphm, th ? duke of 
Anjou, and the duke of Berri. The se(!ond was commanded 
by the duke of Orleans. The king, with .iiis youngest and 
favorite son Philip, were in the third. John gave orders that 
the attack should be begun by three hundred chosen horse- 
men, and that all the rest of the cavalry, with the exception 
of some German troops, should be dismounted. This order 
occasioned great confusion. Each horseman wanted to be 
one of the chosen number. Those who could not be of that 
number were dissatisfied ; and ths time that should have been 
spent in disposing the men in order of battle was passed in 
disputes and squabbles. At last order was restored, and the 
attack commenced. 

The three hundred chosen horsemen led the van, followed 
by the Germans ; but in attempting to push through the vine- 
yards which surrounded the English intrenchments, they found 
themselves entangled among the trees. Their horses were 
rendered unmanageable by the arrows poured on them by the 
English archers, and turned round, overthrowing the German 
cavalry in their rear. This movement had something the 
appearance of a repulse, and, either from over-caution or cow 
ardice, the officers who had the care of the dauphin and his 
brothel s, withdrew with the three young princes from the 
field. Their flight spread an alarm throughout the army, 
and the whole of the first and second divisions followed them, 
without having even faced the enemy. The king's divisional 
one remained, but this was superior in numbers to the whole 
English army, and John still continued confident of victory. 
tie did not want either for bravery or skill, and manfully ex- 
erted both, remaining in the field, notwithstanding his being 
twice wounded in the face, till the close of the day. His 
youngest son, Philip, fought by his side, and would not be per- 
(^uaded to leave his father. 

At last John foimd that his troops had given way on every 
side, and that the field was lost. He saw himself entirely 
surrounded by the enemy, and observing among them a knight 
of Artois, named De Morbec, who, being an outlaw, had en- 
listed in the English army, he surrendered himself to him. 
The English soldiers disputed the prize with De Morbec, and 
while they were contending, the earl of Warwick arrived with 
orders from the Black Prince to conduct John and his young 
son, who had surrendered vrith him, to his tent. The prince 
'eceived his royal captives with the greatest court«-3y and re- 
snect. During supper he waited upon the king as if he had 



806 JOH> [Chaf. XIX 

*ieeii ilia own father ; and seeing him sad and heavy, he soughl 
to cheer him bj" consoHng words. He said to him, " Although, 
aohle sir, it was not God's will that you shcjuld win the day; 
vet yotiL singly have wcin the prize of valor, since it was appa 
rent to every Englishman that none bore himself so bravely 
as you." 

The prince conveyed his prisoners the next day to Bor- 
deaux, where they remained till the following spring, when 
they were conducted to England, and were there received by 
Edward and his queen Philippa with every demonstration of 
respect. The palace of the Savoy, in London, was allotted 
to the French king for his residence ; and during the four 
years he remained in England he was treated more like a 
guest than a prisoner. 

In the mean time France was plunged in the greatest mis 
ery. The dauphin took upon himself the management of 
affairs. He was a young man of great talents and activity, 
but was too young and inexperienced to be able to govern the 
country at such a juncture. He was guided and misled by 
evil coimselors, and endeavored to keep the people tranquil by 
making promises, which he did not perform, of redressing 
their grievances. He thus forfeited their confidence, and pre- 
pared for himself a long train of difficulties and troubles. In 
deed the condition of the country was such, that it would have 
been scarcely possible even for the most wise and able man to 
stem the torrent of evil which was flowing in from all sources. 
The nobles, instead of lending their help to the exigencies of 
the state, were only thinking how they might avail themselves 
of the feebleness of the government to further their own pri- 
vate interests. They endeavored to deprive the enfranchised 
peasants of their newly acquired rights, and to restore them 
again to a state of feudal slavery. It is scarcely to be believed 
what cruelties and violences these arrogant oppressors wera 
guilty of. They pillaged the peasants without mercy, burned 
their dwelhngs, and drove them like wild beasts to seek shelter 
in caverns and for/^rts. 

But these wicked violences prepared their own punishment. 
A worm, when trod on, will turn again. Some peasants in 
Beauvoisis were talking over their g^ ievances, and they agreed 
among themselves that it would be a, justifiable deed to exter- 
minate the whole race of the nobiUty and gentry. The word 
was no sooner given than taken : they seized on scythes, pitch- 
forks, and whatever they could first lay hold of, and, rushing 
io tlie nearest g^intleman's house, they murdered all the in- 



\ D. 1353.] JOHN ZO'i 

habitants, and set fire to the house. With hourly increasing 
numbers they proceeded onward, destroying and slaughtering 
wherever they came. The panic of the gentry was extreme ; 
all who could, fled to the nearest fortified town. This insur- 
rection, which was called the Jacquerie, spread with frightful 
rapidity, and it was impossible to foresee where it would end ; 
for no one of the higher orders could consider himself joi a mo- 
ment safe, since he knew not how soon his own servants might 
turn against him. 

Every one, however, saw that something must be done, and 
that speedily ; the difference of party and of country was for- 
gotten, and the English and the French all united against the 
Jacquerie. Even the king of Navarre, who had escaped from 
his prison, united with the dauphin in this emergency, and 
the insurrection was soon quelled. 

Thus were the provinces restored to comparative tranquil- 
lity, but the government was by no means settled. Charles 
of Navarre laid claim to the crown, and Paris was in a con- 
tinual tumult. There was at that time in the city a man of 
the name of Marcel ; he was the provost of the merchants, 
an office which, in some respects, resembled that of the lord- 
mayor of London. Marcel at first affected a great desire to 
serve his fellow-citizens, and to protect their liberties ; but he 
soon declared himself a strenuous partisan of the king of Na 
varre. 

In 1358 the dauphin was appointed regent. In the prov 
inces he was able to support his authority ; but in Paris Mar- 
eel had raised so strong a party in favor of the king of Navarre, 
that the dauphin was several times obliged to abandon the 
city. The contentions between Charles and him make the 
history of this period extremely tedious. Charles, who was 
very eloquent, would frequently harangue the mob from a 
raised platform. The dauphin would do the same. Neither 
party, however, confined itself entirely to a war of words ; they 
both frequently proceeded to violence. Marcel one day entered 
the palace of the dauphin, and murdered two of his servants 
before his face. He justified himself by sayir.g that these men 
had given the dauphin bad advice ; he then snatched the cap, 
or harrette, from the prince's head, to put upon his cwn, and 
made him wear a parti-colored hood of red and blue, which 
was the badge of Navarre. The dauphin found himself ob'ijred 
to submit, for the time, to the insolence of Marcel, but he took 
the first opportunity of escaping from Paris. 

A.t the commencement of the disturbances Marcel, und^ii 



808 »OHN. [Chap. XIX 

pretext of securing, the city front the attacks of the free com 
panies, had repaired and strengthened the fortifications, and 
planted cannon on the walls. For some time he continued 
steady to the king of Navarre's party, but afterward becoming 
displeased with him, he entered into secret intelligence with 
the English, and took measures for betraying the city to theiu. 
His intentions, however, were suspected by some of his fellow- 
citizens, and one of them, named John Maillard, seeing him 
going slyly toward one of the city gates at midnight, accused 
him of an intention to open them to the enemy. A tumult 
arose, in which Marcel was slain, and the keys of the gate 
were found concealed under his cloak. 

On Marcel's death the party of the king of Navarre declined, 
the parti-coloured hoods were thrown away, tranquiUity was 
restored, and on August 24, 1358, the dauphin once mors 
took possession of Paris. 

The king of Navarre was more exasperated than discouic- 
aged by the turn his affairs had taken. He blockaded Paris 
by land and water, and cut off all its supphes ; he vowed tha*: 
he would never have peace with the princes of the house of 
Valois, and the dauphin found himself in the utmost distress 
and difficulty. He had no money, and was obliged to have 
recourse to the same sort of leather money which had formerly 
been used in the time of Henry I. In addition to all the other 
calamities with which Paris was now afflicted, that of famine 
was beginning to be severely felt, and it seemed as if Charles 
the Bad would soon effect the ruin, not only of Paris, but of 
the whole kingdom ; when suddenly his mind changed, and 
from some cause, which historians and pohticians have vainly 
tried to discover, he made peace with the dauphin, withdrew 
the blockade of Paris, and relinquished all pretensions to the 
crown of France. 

The dauphin beiig now more his own master than he had 
ever yet been, was able to take measures for his father's re- 
lease ; but Edward's terms were severe ; the states-general 
were firm in their rejection of them, and nothing could at first 
be done. Edward, with a view to enforce compliance with 
his demands, entered France with a numerous army, and 
marched through the country till he came to Montlheri, where 
he encamped. The dauphin, profiting by the experience of 
former disasters, avoided coming to a pitched battle. He left 
all the country open, but placed strong garrisons in the towns, 
and strongly defended himself in Paris. Edward in vain at- 
tempted to provoke him to come to an engagement. In vain 



A.U. 1360.: JOHN. 20i 

did Sir Walter Manny, and other daring -warriors, ride a tilt 
against the harriers of Paris ; the dauphin kept himself shui 
up within his walls, nor would he suffer any of his knights to 
answer the insults of the English. He, nevertheless, kept a 
watchful lookout upon them ; and even the convent hells were 
not allowed to he rung for midnight prayers, as was customary, 
lest the watchmen should he preve'nted from hearing the 
movements of the enemy. 

Edward at last broke up his camp, and advanced toward 
Chartres,* still meeting no opposition, and amusing himself 
with his hawks and hounds, as if he had come to hunt, and 
not to fight. During his progress he was continually follow- 
ed by commissioners from the dauphin and the states-general, 
importuning him to agree to a peace on terms which they 
could accept. But the English king would agree to no terms 
whatever ; he considered the whole kingdom as within his 
grasp, and nothing but being it"^ monarch would now consent 
him. But God, " in whose rule and governance are tht 
hearts of princes," turned the heart of this ambitious king. 
A more violent storm than had been before known in the 
memory of man overtook the Enghsh army, as it approaf^hed 
the village of Bretigny, near Chartres. The thunder and 
lightning were tremendous, and were accompanied by hail 
of such extraordinary size, that six thousand of the English 
horses are said to have been killed by it, and several of the 
soldiers severely hurt. The king was so much impressed by 
the awfulness of this circumstance, that he considered it as 
a warning from heaven not to harden himself any longei 
against "the prayers of France." He immediately entered 
into a treaty with the dauphin, which, after a great many 
preliminaries, was at last concluded in 1360, and is called the 
treaty of Bretigny. 

Edward demanded three millions of gold crowns for John's 
ransom, which the states, on condition of certain iramimities 
from their king, agreed to give. It was to be paid at three 
installments ; and at the first payment Edward promised to 
set John at liberty, on receiving, as hostages, the king's three 
youngest sons, with the duke of Orleans, and thirty Fiench 
uoblemen, to guarantee the payment cif the remainder. Ed- 
ward agreed, on his part, to withdraw his pretensions to the 
crown of France, retaining, however, CalaiS; and all his son's 
late conquests in Guienne. 

In October, 1360, John again entered France, after a 

* Southwest of Paris- 



«10 .Offii. LCuAP. )CIX 

captivity of four years. The people seemed to have Ibrgol 
all their past sufferings, and when the king made his public 
entry into Paris, he was received with every demonstration 
of joy. 

John was scarcely restored to his kingdom, when he hegan 
to form plans for a crusade to the Holy Land. He was, 
liowever, interrupted in this scheme by the misconduct of his 
sons, the dukes of Anjou and of Berri. These two princes, 
with the other royal hostages, had been received by Edward 
with the greatest courtesy and kindness. The town of Calais 
had been assigned them as their prison, if prison it could be 
called, when they were allowed the permission of going 
wherever they pleased, provided they returned to Calais every 
fourth day. But even this was considered by the two young 
princes as too severe a restraint. They came to Paris, and 
refused to return. John was exceedingly distressed at this 
conduct of his sons. He regarded it as a breach of his own 
honor, which could only be redeemed by his going and sur- 
rendering himself again as a prisoner to Edward. He accord- 
ingly returned to England. Soon afterward he fell ill of a 
languishing disorder, and died at the palace of the Savoy, 
April 8, 1364. The king of England gave him a magnifi- 
cent and royal funeral. His body was afterward removed to 
France, and interred in the abbey of St. Denis. 

John was twice married : first to Bona, daughter of the 
blind king of Bohemia ; and, secondly, to Jane of Boulogne, 
widow of the duke of Burgundy. By Bona he had four sons 
ind four daughters : 

(1.) Charles, who succeeded his father. (2.) Louis, duke 
of Anjou. (3.) John, duke of Berri. (4.) Philip, duke of 
Burgundy. (5.) Maria, duchess of Bar. (6.) Jane, married 
Charles the Bad. (7.) Isabella, married John Visconti, first 
duke of Milan. (8.) Margaret, a nun. 

John's second wife had one son by her former Tnaarriage, 
<vho died in 1361. In him ended the race of the Capetian 
dukes of Burgundy. The king of Navarre claimed the duchy 
in right of his grandmother, who was aunt to the late duke ; 
but John, although he had a more distant claim, took posses 
eim of it; and gave it to his youngest son. ' The king of 
.Navarre, as some amends for the injustice done him, had the 
eity of MontpelUer bestowed upon him in the succeeding reign. 

John found so much difficulty in raising the money for the 
payment of his ransom, that he was obliged to recall the Jews 
' consideration of their paying him a large sum of money, 



O'oNV.1 JOHN. 211 

he granted tliem permission to return to France for a term of 
twenty years. 

John founded the royal library at Paris, which consisted at 
first of only ten volumes. 

About this time Joanna, queen of Naples, sold the city of 
Avignon to the popes. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XIX. 

Mary. I think, mamma, that of all the terrible tlungs 
you have ever told us, that insurrection of the peasants was 
the worst. But why was it called the Jacquerie ? 

Mrs. Markham. Some persons imagine the name to have 
originated from an insulting name* by which the upper classes 
were accustomed to caU the peasantry. Others, and I believe 
with more reason, suppose it to have been derived from a 
Jack, a sort of short coat, which was worn by the country 
people. In the Chronicles of Froissart, there are some dread- 
ful particulars of this insurrection. 

Mary. Do you remember any of them ? 

Mrs,. M. The dauphiness, with the ladies of her couri, 
were in the town of Meux. The Jacquerie approached the 
town in great numbers, and the ladies were in the greatest, 
possible alarm, having no means of making any defense. 
The duke of Orleans was the only nobleman with them, and 
they had no dependence on any of the people of the town ; 
who, either through cowardice or wickedness, opened their gates 
as soon as the mob arrived, and admitted them into the town. 
At that moment two of king Edward's knights passing that 
way, heard of the peril the dauphiness and her ladies were in. 
They set spurs to their horses, and galloping into the town, 
found the Jacquerie surrounding the palace, and threatening 
to burst open the gates, and murder every one within. The 
two knights drew their swords, and being joined by the duke 
of Orleans, dispersed the Jacquerie and drove them out of tlie 
town, and slew seven thousand of them. 

Richard. Three men to kill seven thousand I 

Mrs. M. Of course we must suppose that these knighta 
had some followers with them, though our historian Froissart 
tells us nothing about it, and only says that they were well cased 
in armor, and that the Jacquerie had nothing but their jackets. 

George. Does he say who the two knights were ? 

Mr'i. M Yes : he tells us that one was the earl of Foix, 

* Jaq'ies bon hoiu me. 



il'2 JOHN. [Chap. XIX 

and the other the captil de Buche, the same Avho afteiwarfl 
died of grief, as perhaps you may remember, for the death of 
the Black Prince. 

Richard. I can not helj thinking that it was an over- 
stretched notion of honor in king John to go bick again to 
England ; he had better have stayed at home, and have tried 
to make his people happy and comfortable. 

Mrs. M. During John's first captivity, a wax taper was 
placed in the church of Notre Dame, at Paris, and was kept 
•"uming till his return. 

Mao-y. You said he was four years in England, and how 
could a wax taper be kept burning so long ? 

Mrs. M. This taper would have burned even much long- 
er. It was said to have been of such a prodigious length that 
it might have encompassed Paris, which was six miles round 
The taper was wound, like a rope, round a large wheel. 

Mary. I think, mamma, there is no end of the odd things 
you find to tell us. 

Mrs. M. And I have found, to-day, many more odd thmga 
to tell you, in Dulaure's History of Paris. 

Richard. Pray, mamma, will you let us hear them ? 

Mrs. M. I will give you a description of the daily routine 
of bustle in the streets of Paris, at about the middle of the 
fourteenth century. The first sound that was heard, as soon 
as the day arose, was the tinkling of little bells, which were 
rung by persons clothed in black, whose business it was to 
announce the death of such persons as had died during the 
night, and to call upon all good Christians to pray for the 
souls of the deceased. 

George. I don't think that was so solemn and awful a 
way of telling one that somebody is dead, as our way of toll 
ing the passing bell ; but, if you please, go on. 

Mrs. M. 'These proclaimers of death were succeeded by 
the people who attended at the hot baths, and who, with 
loud voices, let every body know when the baths were ready, 
bidding all who meant to bathe to make haste before thn 
water got cold. After these people followed the tradesmen, 
who seem to have been greatly in the habii of hawking their 
goods about the town ; and for several hours nothing was 
heard but the voices, of butchers, millers, and the sellers of 
fish, fruit, and vegetables. 

Richard. Is it said in the book what sort of fruit and 
vegetables they had at that time ? 

Mrs. M. 'The chief fruits I find mentioned are medlars 



CoNV.] JOHN. 213 

wild plurns, pears, and apples. It should appear that the 
most crude and acrid sorts were the most esteemed, as also 
the most pimgent and strongly tasted vegetables. Peas, beans, 
and turnips were cultivated ; but leeks, chervil, purslain, cress, 
anise, shallot, and garhc were in great request, particularly 
garlic, of which a kind of sauce was made, which was spread 
on bread, and eaten as we do bread and butter. Besides 
these tradespeople, there were various artificers who followed 
their calling in the open streets ; among these were the mend- 
ers of old clothes, who stood ready prepared with needles and 
threads to repair any hole or accidental rent that the clothes 
of a passenger might have met with. 

Mary. That was a very convenient custom. 

Mrs. M. The Parisians had also another custom, which 
I don't quite so much approve of, which was, that when any 
disaster befel them, they would stand at the doors of their 
houses, and with loud voices proclaim their misfortunes to all 
the passers-by. 

Richard. What a noise and chattering there must hav3 
been ! I would not have lived in Paris for all the world I 

Mrs. M. And then to all this din, were added the clam- 
orous voices of the monks and scholars, who went begging 
About the streets. 

Mary. Scholars begging, mamma I 

Mrs. M. The scholars of Paris were then a very ill-con- 
ducted set, notwithstanding that one of their schools had the 
imposing title of " The School of Good Children." 

Mary. I wonder their masters did not keep them in better 
order. 

Mrs. M. I am afraid the masters wanted keeping in good 
order themselves, for they are accused of showing a very un- 
justifiable indulgence to their pupils of high degree, and of 
treating the poorer ones with neglect and barbarity ; and this, 
perhaps, was one cause which drove them to beg in the streets. 
There is an old book, written about this time, entitled " The 
Scholars' Miseries,"* in which the author pathetically de- 
scribes the ill conduct of the masters to the poorer scholars, 
" whose faces," he says, " were pale and haggard, their hair 
neglected, and their clothes in rags." There is an old manu- 
script grammar of this time, .the frontispiece of which is a 
heart-rending picture of the interior of a school, in which 
the master is represented witli a most enormous rod in his 
half-raised hand, ready to let it fall on the shoulders of hia 
* Miserice S;holastica'um. 



J14 JOHN. [Chap. XIX. 

poor scholars, wlio are standing around him with their books, 
and who are drawn with their shoulders naked, in readiness 
io rece'.ve the impending hlow. Indeed, rods were so much 
m use, that they were reckoned as among the necessary ex- 
penses of a college. 

RicJiard. Was any thing new taught, or did they go on 
learning the same sort of things as formerly ? 

Mrs. M. I believe there was very little change ; except 
indeed, that the Latin was employed less exclusively, and tho 
vulgar tongue, or language of the country, began to take it» 
place. I ought not to say that there was nothing new ; the 
pretended science of astrology became about this time a favor- 
ite study. I am not quite sure whether or not it was taugh<" 
in the university of Paris ; but this I know, that master Ger- 
vaise, astrologer to Charles V., founded a college in Paris for 
the express use of students in astrology, which college was 
afterward suppressed, and the building is now a barrack for 
veteran soldiers. 

Geoi'ge. And a very good use to put it to. 

Mrs. M. The university of Paris was filled with students 
of all nations. A writer of the time of St. Louis gives the 
following description of them. The French, he says, were 
proud, vainglorious, and effeminate ; the Germans were rough- 
tempered and vulgar ; the Normans were vain and boasting ; 
the English were drunkards and poltroons. 

George. Nay, mamma, that was too bad ! They may 
have been drunkards, but I am sure they never could have 
been poltroons. 

Mrs. M. I fear the English did not at that time enjoy a 
very high national reputation. Petrarch, the great Italian 
poet, who lived in the fourteenth century, says, " In my youth 
the inhabitants of Britain, whom they call Enghsh, were the 
most cowardly of all the barbarians, inferior even to the vile 
Scotch." 

George. I should like to have asked that impertinent Pe 
trarch, how the English, if they were such cowards, could 
win the battles of Cressy and Poitiers ? 

Mrs. M. Petrarch had the candor afterward to acknowl- 
edge, that " the English, having been trained under a wise 
and bra-ve king, Edward III., were become a brave and war- 
like people." Hov/ever, with regard to the victories of Cressy 
and of Poitiers, the history of them clearly shows us that the 
English owed them not more to their ov/n bravery than tq 
the insubordination of the French. 



UOMT.l . OHN. 215 

Petrarch also says of a French army, " When you enter 
their camp, you might think yourself in a tavern. The sol- 
diers are doing nothing hut eating, drinking, and reveling in 
their tents. When called out to hattle they suhmit to no 
chief, obey no orders, but run hither and thither like bees that 
have lost their hive ; and when they are made to fight, they 
do nothing for the love of their countiy, but are wholly swayed 
by vanity, interest, and jlleasure." 

Ricliard. How came this Italian poet to know any thing 
about French camps ? 

Mrs. M. He visited Fmnce twice. The first time was 
soon after the battle of Cressy, and he gives in a letter to a 
friend a veiy moving picture of the state of France. He says 
that the country appeared every where desolated by fire and 
sword. The fields lay waste and untilled. The houses were 
falling in ruins, excepting here and there one which was made 
into a fortress ; and traces of the English, and of the havoc 
they had made, might every where be seen. Paris, he says, 
looked forlorn and desolate ; the highways were overgrown 
with weeds and brambles, and many of the streets deserted ; 
and the Parisians wore a sad and cast-down look. 

Richard. When one thinks of these things, it takes of! 
very much from the pleasure of boasting of the victories of 
Cressy and Poitiers. 

Mrs. M. Petrarch's second visit was immediately aftei 
king John's return, when he was sent by the duke of Milan 
to congratulate him on his restoration to liberty. Petrarch 
has left us a very pleasing description of Charles V., who was 
then dauphin, and whose reign we shall enter on to-morrow. 

Richard. Pray, mamma, what does he say of him ; for J 
tike always to know beforehand as much as I can of people ? 

Mrs. M. He says that he was astonished at the cultiva- 
tion of liis mind, and the polished elegance of his manners. 
But what he most of all admired him for was, the wisdom and 
moderation with which he would converse on all subjects, the 
respect he showed to men of learning and experience, and his 
own ardent desire of obtaining knowledge. 

George. What a comfort it will be to come to a good 
king aoain I I really think we have not had one since St 
Loiiis. 



CHAPTER XX. 

CHARLES v., SUUNAMED THE WISH. 
[Years after Christ, 13&1-1380.J 




-'^.^ 



Charles V. 
With the Castle of Vincennes in the Distance. 

Charles on ascending the throne found himself cncom- 
compassed by cares and difficulties. His kingdom was dis- 
membered by a foreign foe, his finances were exhausted, his 
people harassed by the continual depredations of the free 
companies, and the government weak and disorganized ; but 
by his extraordinary prudence and ability he delivered his 
country from all its worst grievances, and placed it in a more 
prosperous condition than it had for a long time known. 

This king, deservedly surnamed the Wise, was one of the 
very few good kings who have sat on the throne of France. 
He had a great capacity, an extraordinary command of tem- 
per, and iras considerate and kind to his attendants. Frugal 
and economical in his personal expenses, he yet knew how to 
be magnificent and liberal on all proper occasions. He loved 
and ejicourajred men of learninir, and had himself received $ 



A..D. 1364.] CHARLES V. 2r 

more learned education than was at that time customary 
among princes. 

The kings of France had hitherto been Httle more than 
the leaders of armies, and to he valiant was often their only 
merit ; but in Charles the Wise the French saw for the finst 
lime a monarch who could regulate the march of an army 
without engaging personally in thn campaign. Edward III. 
used to say of him, that of all the competitors he ever con- 
teaded with, Charles was the one who never appeared against 
him, and yet gave him the most trouble. Charles, however, 
though he did not himself lead his troops, knew how to ap- 
point good generals. The most famous of these was the 
fwnstable Du Guesclin, and the French used to boast that 
they had the wisest king and the bravest general in Europe. 

Du Guesclin was a gentleman of Bretagne, M^ho had al- 
ready distinguished himself in the wars with the English. 
Charles gave him the command of an army, which he sent 
in 1367 into Spain to the assistance of Henry of Trastamare, 
who had been invited by the Castilians to take the crown of 
Castile from his half-brother Pedro, surnamed the Cruel. 
Pedro applied for aid to the Black Prince, who marched into- 
Spain, and on April 3, 1367, encountered the army of Du 
Guesclin, near Najara. The French were completely defeat- 
ed, and Du Guesclin was taken prisoner. The loss of this 
battle, though fatal at the time to the cause of Trastamare. 
was yet a gain rather than a loss to CharLs, who had entered 
into the war chiefly wdth a view of clearing his own country 
from the oppression of the free companies. These had gladly 
enlisted in the army of Du Guesclin, and had flocked like 
birds of prey to the Spanish war. 

After the battle of Najara, Pedro was replaced upon the 
throne of Castile, and remained secure as long as the English 
troops stayed in Spain. But when the Black Prince, dis- 
gusted by the ingratitude of Pedro, returned to Bordeaux, the 
tyrant, no longer checked by his presence, resumed his bar- 
barities. The Castilians again rose in arms ; Pedro was 
killed in battle, and Henry of Trastamare was established on 
the throne. 

It was suspected that while the Black Prince was in Spain, 
Pedro had contrived to give him a slow poison. It is certain 
that on his return to Bordeaux his health was completely 
broken dowai ; and what \'i'as still more lamentable, his tem- 
per, which was formerly mild and forgiving, was now, from 
the fever of his bodv. become irritalie and vindictive, and he 

K 



218 CHARLES V. [Chap. XS 

gave frftquent causes of dissatisfaction to his Gascon subjects, 
who were jealous of the preference which he showed for the 
Enghsh. Charles, who Icept a watchful eye upon the posses- 
sions of the English in France, saw with satisfaction these 
rising discontents, and availed himself of them to allure many 
of the nobles of Gascony from their allegiance to Edward. 
At last, having sufficiently paved his way, he assembled the 
states, and summoned the king of England as his vassal to 
appear before it, and on his non-appearance he pronounced 
him rebellious and disobedient, and declared all his posiBessions 
in France forfeited. Du Guesclin, who had some time before 
regained his Hberty, and had been made constable of France, 
was sent with a powerful army to Guienne. The Black 
Prince was unable, from the state of his health, to take the 
field. His brother John of Gaunt had, therefore, the com- 
mand of the army, which, although strengthened by reinforce- 
ments from England, was yet unable to arrest the progress oi' 
the French, partly because the hearts of the people naturally 
inclined toward Charles, whom they considered as their legiti- 
mate sovereign, and partly because it was the policy of Charle& 
to order his generals to avoid pitched battles. What he in- 
structed them to do was, to keep strong garrisons in all the 
fortified places, and to sally forth and molest the enemy when- 
ever they could do so without incurring much risk themselves 
Thus the Enghsh saw their numbers diminish in small en- 
counters with the enemy, without having an opportunity o^ 
achieving any signal advantage. 

During these wars the valiant Du Guesclin died. He had 
laid siege to a castle in Languedoc,* and the governor prom- 
ised to surrender it on a specified day, if not relieved in the 
interval. Du Guesclin, who was ill of a fever, expired before 
the appointed day arrived, and the governor was advised by 
his people not to keep to his agreement ; but he declared that 
he would be as true to that great warrior in death as he 
would have been to him in life, and on the day originally 
fixed, he marched, followed by his garrison, to the French 
camp, and placed the keys of his castle on the bier of tho 
deceased hero. The king was deeply grieved by the death ol 
Du Guesclin; he raised a magnificent monument to hit> 
memory in the abbey of St. Denis, and placed on it a lamp 
which was kept burning for many centuries. Du Guescliu 
with his dying words exhorted his soldiers never to forgel 
what he had so often told them, that in whatever countrj 
* In fbe south part of France. 



A.D. 1377.J 



OHAELES V. 



SI« 



they should have to carry on war, they should never con- 
eider the clergy, the women, children, or the poor, as their 
enemies 




Thb Constable Dn Guesclin. 



When Du Guesclin was dead, many of his captains refused 
the office of constable, a^ deeming themselv(/s unworthy to 
succeed him ; at last it was accepted by Ohver du Clisson. 

The affairs of the English in France rapidly declined from 
this time, and Edward had the mortification of beholding his 
boasted conquests gradually fall from his grasp. This, added 
to his affliction at the death of his incomparable son, embit- 
tered his latter days, and probably shortened them. He -died 
in 1377, and during the feeble reign of his grandson, Richard 
II., the English lost every thing they had possessed in France 
excepting Calais, Cherburg, Bordeaux, and Bayonne.* 

I must now say something of the affairs of Bretagne. 
When last we spoke of them, the son of De Montford was 
still a chdd, and Charles de Blois was in captivity ; but in 
1364, Charles had regained his liberty, the young De Mont 
ford was become a man, and the civil war W5is again renewed 
On the 20 th of September in that year (1364), Charles da 
Blois was killed in a battle which was fought near Auray,| 

* The two former on the northern, and the two latter on the westers 
coast. 
t Auray is near Vamies, on the western coast. 



628 CHARLES V. [Cn.-..-'. XX 

and the king of France consented to acknov/.oa^c Do Mont* 
ford as duke of Bretagne. 

The king of Navarre, during all this time, never ceased 
showing his settled enmity to Charles. He carried his wick 
edness so far as to give him poison, and though the effect was 
checked by antidotes, yet it finally caused his death. 

In 1378 Charles of Navarre sent his eldest son to Paris, 
under the pretense of paying a visit of respect to the king his 
uncle, but in reality as a spy. He is also accused of haAring 
commissioned his son to give the king another and a stronger 
dose of poison. How far the accusation was true can not 
now be known ; it was, however, beheved at the time. The 
young prince of Navarre was put in prison, and two, of his 
attendants, who were supposed to be agents in the plot, wero 
beheaded. 

The king's health was declining for some years before hia 
death ; and his physicians declared that his life could only be 
preserved by keeping open an issue, and t'lat if it dried up he 
must assuredly die. In 1380 he received the fatal warning, 
the issue dried up, and could by no means be kept open. 
Charles prepared for death with the greatest fortitude. He 
made eveiy regulation that prudence could suggest for the 
security of his sons, who were very young, and of the king- 
dom, and awaited his final hour with piety and resignation. 
He died Sept. 16, 1380,* in the forty-fourth year of his age, 
and had reigned sixteen years. 

He married Jane of Bourbon, and left twa sons : 

(1.) Charles, who succeeded him. (2.) Louis, duke ol 
Orleans. 

Chailes the Wise left the royal cofiers well filled with 
treasure. He erected many stately buildings. He added 
greatly to the library founded by his father, which at his 
death had increased to nine hundred volumes, and was placed 
m one of the towers of the Louvre. 

Charles entered into a treaty of amity with the king cl 
Scotland ; and a guard of twenty-four natives of Scotland, 
which had been formed originally by St. Louis, was now aug- 
mented to a hundred, and was appointed to be always in at- 
tendance on the king. 

The king of Navarre survived his victim some years. His 

death, which took place in 1387, was occasioned by the care 

lessness of one of his attendants, who set fire to some band- 

ftges steeped in brandy, which the king wore about him oo 

* At the chateau de Beaute sur Maine 



Co.NV j CHARLES V. 2^1 

account of some cutjuieous disorder. By this means he wai 
so dreadfully burned that he died in the greatest tortures. 

In this reign pope Gregory V. removed the papal see from 
Avignon to Rome. After the death of Gregory great con- 
fusion arose among the cardinals relative to electing a new 
pope. The schism lasted forty years. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XX. 

George. I think, mamma, it was very boasting of tn«3 
French to say that they had the wisest king and the bravest 
general in Europe. 

Richard. I think the French would have been very un- 
grateful if they had not boasted of their king ; for I am sur& 
he was a very good king to them. 

Mrs. M. One of the things I admire in Charles was his 
exactitude in business ; a virtue which is quite as essential in 
a king as it is in a tradesman. 

Mary. Why, what sort of business could a king of Franco 
liave to attend to ? 

Mrs. M. The cares of government involve a great deal of 
business, such, for instance, as that of furnishing magazines, 
and providing means for supplying the wants of an army. 
These cares had usually been left to the ministers, but Charles 
took them upon himself ; and to his personal attention to them 
much of the success of his arms may be justly attributed. 

Geo7'ge. But I thought you said he never would let hia 
generals come to a battle. 

M7'S. M. He found that without a battle he could waste 
and diminish the strength of the English. He dreaded, from 
the experience of past misfortunes, to place the fortune of a 
wai upon a single blow ; and to prevent his generals from 
committing that error, he never would trust them with the 
command of a large army. His method was to divide the 
forces of his kingdom into five parts ; four of these were em- 
ployed under different leaders to harass the enemy in difierent 
places ; the fifth division he kept with himself, ready to push 
'any advantage, or repair any loss that might accrue to the 
others. 

RiJiard. And I suppose that was the most politic plan, 
because it answered. 

Mrs. M. Charles was no les? exact and methodical in the 
manner of his private life than in the discharge of public af 



?22 CHARLES V [Chap. XX 

faira. He rose early, and retired to rest early at night ; and 
during the day was constantly employed. When he had ended 
his morning devotions h*^ applied himself to the affairs of 
state. He dined at noon, and afterward took the exercise re- 
quisite for his health. 

Mary. Poor man ! what a shocking thing it must have 
been to him to know that he had swallowed poison, and to 
think that he might die any day. 

Mrs. M. That, my dear cliild, is nothing more than what 
we all ought to think ; for we none of us know the day nor 
the hour when we may be called hence. But I agree with 
you that the knowledge that he had been poisoned must have 
been a great trial of Charles's fortitude ; and it is among the 
things for which he is to be commended, that this knowledge 
did not paralyze his mind, nor deprive him of his energy. On 
the contrary, it made him the more earnest to employ to the 
best purpose every hour that remained to him. Expecting 
his death daily, he was the more anxious to provide against 
all the dangers to which his young son would be exposed. To 
this end he intrusted the queen with all his affairs of state, 
and gave her instructions for her conduct in case of his death \ 
but unfortunately for the young prince, and to the utter grief 
of the king, she died first. 

Mary. Was she a very fine character ? 

Mrs. M. She is highly spoken of by contemporary authors, 
and it is said that the king (an uncommon circumstance among 
crowned heads) had married her from pure affection, and for 
her sake had rejected the rich heiress of Flanders. Jane was 
a very graceful and accomplished woman, and the French 
court, during the reign of Charles V., was better regulated 
and more correct than it ever seems to have been at any for- 
mer time. 

Ridiard. I suppose, then, that all ladies had begun to be 
accomplished and graceful, and Uke what ladies are now. 

Mrs. M. I should suspect that they had not, in general, 
acquired much refinement ; at least I judge so by a French 
poem of which I have met with some account, and which was 
written about this period for the express benefit of the ladies. 
The poet's first exhortation to them is, that they should avoid 
pride, and return the salutations they receive — eveii those of 
the poDr people. He then recommends them, when they go 
to church, to walk in an orderly manner, and not to run and 
jump in the streets. He recommends them not to laugh and 
jest during mass, and adds that those who can read should 



Ji,sT.f CHAR:.ES v. 223 

take their psalters, and those who can not would do well to 
learn the prayers by heart at home, that when they come to 
church th(jy may be able to keep pace with the priest. 

Mary. And does he tell them nothing more than how 
they are to behave at church ? 

Mrs. M. He says that ladies should be neat in their per- 
sons, and keep their nails cut short ; and that they should not 
laugh or talk too loud at dinner, nor daub their fingers with 
their food. He goes on to say, that when ladies walk in the 
streets they must not stop as they pass to look in at people's 
windows ; for this, he observes, is neither agreeable nor 
seemly. He says, that when they visit their friends, they 
ought not to bounce all at once into the room, but stop at the 
entrance, and announce their coming by a little gentle cough, 
or by speaking a few words. The poem winds up by a rec- 
ommendation to the ladies to forbear from stealing and telling 
lies. 

George. They must have been comical ladies in those days, 
to require teUing about such things as those. 

RicJtard. I should think that poem must have been writ- 
ten for the benefit of the ladies who dwelt in towns, and not 
for those fine stately dames who lived in castles. 

Mis. M. The gentlemen of those days came in for their 
share of blame as well as the ladies. 

Mary. What fault was to be found in them particularly ? 

Mrs. M. They are much ridiculed by the M^iters of the 
times for the absurdity of their dress. Among other things 
M'e are told that they adopted such an extraordinary fashion 
•n their boots that the king pubHshed an edict against it. 

Mary. Pray, mamma, what were these boots like. 

Mrs. M. They were intended to be like a bird : the front 
projected in a sharp point at the top in the shape of a beak, 
and the back of the heel was lengthened out, to look like a 
claw. I can not imagine any thing more ridiculous. 

Riducrd. Was the rest of the men's dress equally ridicu- 
lous ? 

Mrs. M. Dress, about this time, underwent, in Fj ance, a 
very remarkable change. Heretofore the nobles were clad in 
ong flowing robes, and they, and all persons of respectable 
station of middle life, wore long hoods, which hung down on 
the back ; but now these robes and hoods were left off^ if not 
universally, at least by the younger nobility, who, in place of 
the long robe, adopted a tight short jacket, which exposed to 
e'ievf the whole form of the lim.ljs 



824 CHARLES VI. [Cbap. XXi 

Geai-ge. They must Have looked like 30 many postillions 

Mrs. M. These innovations did not come in all at once. 
A French writer in the reign of Phihp of Valois reproaches 
his countrymen with their dress, which he tells them makes 
them look like so many merry-andrews. He adds, that they 
are so fantastic in their modes, that they are always in one 
foohsh extreme or another ; sometimes their clothes, he says, 
are too long, at others too short ; at one time too tight, and 
at another too wide. 

George. I suspect the good gentleman was rather hard tc 
please. 

Mrs. M. He inveighs, above all, at their changeabieness, 
and complains, that the same fashion seldom lasted more than 
six years. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

CHA.E,LES VI., SURNAMED TEE WELL BELOVED 

[Years after Christ, 1380-1422. J 



Citizens of Fabis in the Keisn op Cbarlks Vf 

We are now come to the most disastrous psriod m tne 
whole long history of France. We shall see the fruits of tho 
late king's prudence and care totally destroyed ; we shall see 
the sovereign a miserable maniac ; the princes of the blood 
sacrificing their duty to the indulgence of their OAvn base pas 
sions ; and the nobles acting as if they partook in the madness 
of their, monarch, and the kingdom brought to the very vero^e 
of ruin. But I must relate all things in order. 



v330.1 CHARLES VI. i2i 

The young king was only thirteen years old when his father 
died. The duke of Anjou was appointed regent during hi« 
minority, hut the dukes of Berri and of Burgundy each de- 
sired to have a share in the government, and the jealousies 
and contentions among these three princes, who were all 
equally violent, selfish, and greedy of gain, were, as I may 
truly say, the b-eginning of troubles. The duke of Burgundy 
had the best abilities ; but the duke of Anjou was the most 
ambitious, and made no scruple of sacrificing the interest of 
France, and of his nephew, to forward his own private 
echemes. 

A short time before the late king's death, Joamia, queen 
of Naples, a descendant of Charles of Anjou, in order to re- 
venge herself on Charles Durazzo, her nearest relation, who 
had driven her from her throne, adopted the duke of Anjou as 
her heir. Durazzo was in possession of the kingdom of Na- 
ples, but the duke of Anjou, nevertheless, determined to assert 
the claim thus given him by Joanna. To this end he got 
possession of all the money which his brother, the late king, 
had left in the royal treasury ; together with a great quantity 
of gold and silver which was concealed in one of the palaces, 
and the secret of which had been confided to one of the king's 
old servants, from whom Anjou contrived to extort it. 

With this ill-gotten wealth the duke of Anjou raised an 
army and marched into Italy. He at first obtained some 
slight advantages ; but they were soon followed by fatal 
reverses. His army was destroyed, his baggage lost, and he 
was reduced to poverty and distress ; one small silver cup 
being all that remained to him of the immense quantity of 
gold and silver which he had brought from France. He did 
not long survive his misfortunes, and died in 1384 of vexation 
and disappointment. His son, however, still asserted his 
claim, and took on himself the title of Louis II., king of Na 
pies. 

In France, meantime, the duke of Burgundy had assumed 
the reins of power, and used them, as his brother had done, 
for his own purposes : he had married the heiress of the ear] 
of Flanders, and, in 1382, he engaged the young king in a 
war with the Flemings, to quell a,'.i insurrection they hacj 
raised against their earl. The French troops gained a gieat 
victory at Rosebec ; and Charles, who had accompanied hia 
army in person, was much elated at this his first success; in 
arms. On his return to Paris he found thai city in a state of 
tumult on account of the exorbitancy of Ih UiAes. The in- 



1 CHARLES VI, [Chap. XXl 

SI aection was soon quelled, and the offenders punished with 
gi^at severity. Some were pubhcly executad, and oxhera 
were put in sacks and thrown into the river. 

in 1385 Charles married Isabella of Bavaria, a very beau- 
tiful prijicess, but of depraved manners. She brought much 
misery, not only to her husband, but to the whole kingdom. 

The young king's education had been entirely neglected , 
and his uncles had promoted his passing his time in frivolous 
amusements, that he might the less interfere vnth. their 
schemes of ambition. Although hasty and impetuous, he had 
many good qualities ; he was of an affectionate and obliging 
temper ; and it is related of him that he never forgot a kind- 
ness which he had received, nor broke a promise which he 
had made. He had a remarkable faciUty in remembering 
every person's face whom he had once seen ; and among other 
pecuharities, is noted for having possessed an extraordinary 
degree of bodily strength, and, it is said, could bend a horse- 
shoe with his hands. 

In 13SG the French government meditated an invasion of 
England ; but as France had at that time no navy, the re- 
quisite vessels were either purchased or hired from other coun- 
tries. They amounted to nine hundred when collected at 
Sluys. Every gentleman who prepared for this expedition 
was provided with an attendant, styled " a pillard," or, in 
other words, a robber, whose express business was to pillage 
for his master's benefit. One part of the equipage was an 
enormous wooden castle, which could be taken to pieces and 
put together again. But all these mighty preparations came 
to nothing, through the jealousy of the duke de Berri, who, 
though inferior in abilities to the duke of Burgundy, was yet 
equally ambitious, and took every opportunity to thwart and 
perplex his brother in all his measures. The ships were de- 
tained at Sluys till after the stormy season commenced, and 
the art of navigation being but ill understood, many of the 
vessels were wrecked. The wooden castle, which was a much 
vaunted invention, drifted to the mouth of the Thames, and 
became an easy spoil to the English mariners. 

In the following year a fleet was again assembled. I.'he 
men at arms were all prepared, and every thing was ready, 
when the expedition was a second time prevented from sail- 
ing. The duke of Bretagne, either from personal hatred to 
Oliver Du Clisson, who was to have commanded, or from a 
wish to serve his allies, the English, invited Du Clisson to 
pny him a friendly visit. When he had got him in his 



k.D. 1391- '■ CHARLES VI. 22/ 

power, lie madi him his prisoner. He detained him only 
a short time ; but in the mean while the men at aims 
dispersed themselves, and the intended invasion of England 
was given up. 

In 1388, the king, being of age, took the administration of 
affairs into his own hands. He deprived the duke of Bur- 
gundy of his offices, and bestowed them upon his own brother, 
the duke of Orleans. He recalled several of his father's old 
servants, and displaced the creatures of the dukes, his uncles. 
He revoked several unjust laws and oppressive taxes, and 
showed everv wish to rule his people with justice. This waa 
the period in which he obtained the surname of Well Beloved ; 
but this flattering promise did not last long. 

The constable Du Clisson was attacked in the streets of 
Paris by Peter de Craon, a man of infamous character, who, 
m the belief that he had killed his victim, fled for protection 
to the duke of Bretagne. Du Clisson, however, was only se 
verely wounded, and when he recovered called loudly for ven- 
geance on the assassin. The duke of Bretagne was required 
to give him up ; and on his refusal to do so, the king was 
exceedingly enraged, and resolved to march in person into 
Bretagne to punish its contumelious duke. He ordered his 
troops to rendezvous at Mans,* and repaired there himself 
early in the month of August, 139] . The impatience of his 
spirit had thrown him into a fever, and his attendants en- 
deavored to prevail on him to defer his march into Bretagne 
But he would not listen to them, and set forth, notwithstand 
ing the heat of the weather and his own indisposition. 

The way was dusty, and the king rode apart from his com 
pany, followed only by two pages, one of whom carried his 
lance and the other his helmet. Froissart tells us that the 
king's sufierings from the heat were greatly increased by his 
wearing a jerkin of thick velvet, and a heavy cap of scarlet 
cloth adorned with pearls. As he was riding by the side of a 
forest near Mans, suddenly a tall and ghastly man rushed out 
from among the trees, and seizing his bridle, exclaimed, " Stop, 
king I you are going where you are betrayed I" The figure 
then as suddenly disappeared. 

Charles M'as greatly agitated by this incident. While ho 
was ruminating upon it, he arrived at a sandy plain, where 
one of the pages, being overpowered by the heat, fell asleep^ 
and let the lance which he carried fall against the helmet 
borne by his companion. The king, being startled by the 

* A short distance east of the frontier of Bretagne. 



228 CHAKLBS VI. [Chap. XXi 

clauki/ig noise, was seize.-'-' immediately by a sudden frenzy; 
he imagined himself pui -ued by enemies, and riding fiercely 
among his attendants with his sword drawn, would have 
killed or wounded several of them, if they had not fled. At 
last, his sword being broken, one of his servants sprang up 
behind him, and held him tightly by the arms till the rest had 
secured him with ropes, and in this manner he was bound 
down in a cart and conveyed back to Mans. He remained xn 
a state of frenzy for some months, and then recovered hia 
senses ; but the expedition to Bretagne was not resumed. 

In 1393 another fatal accident brought on a return of the 
king's disorder. The circumstance is thus related : — At the 
marriage of one of the queen's attendants, the king and five 
young noblemen of the court agreed to appear in the char- 
acter of savages, in what the Enghsh called a disguisement. 
Their dresses were made of coarse cloth covered with flax, 
which was fastened on with pitch. On account of the in- 
flammable nature of their dress, orders had been given that 
the flambeau bearers (for in those days there were neither 
lamps nor chandeliers) should stand close to the wall ; but 
the duke of Orleans, ignorant of this order, and not thinking 
of the consequences, took a torch from one of the bearers, and 
holding it close to one of the savages, that he might the better 
find out who he was, set fire to the flax. Five of the savages 
were instantly in flames. The sixth, who was the king, 
was standing at a little distance talking to the duchess of 
Berri. She had the presence of mind to envelop him in 
her mantle, and thus saved his life. Four of the others, 
who had entered the room chained together, were burned to 
death ; the fifth, extricating himself from the chain, rushed to 
a large cistern of water which was placed in the buttery for 
the purpose of rinsing the drinking cups, and plunging into it 
saved his life. 

The noise and confusion in the hall were extreme. The 
king was conveyed to his bed, but he was so much shocked 
by this dreadful catastrophe that he could get no sleep all 
night. At last, toward morning, he fell into a doze, from 
which he was presently roused by the voices of the mob, who, 
hearing sometliing of the accident, assembled tumultuously 
round the palace, and would not be convinced that the king 
was not among the sufferers, unless they saw him. He was 
therefore obhged to rise and parade about the streets for the 
purpose of pacifying the people. All this brought on a returo 
of his delirium. From that time till his death he was nevci 



A D. 1403. J CHARLES VL 229 

entirely lestored to reason, or, if ^^ had 'ucid intervals, they 
were very short, and only made hit i feel the more the misery 
of his situation. The people, meanvi'hile, suffered the grievouc 
oppression of being under the rule of many masters. 

The first struggle for power was between the duke of Bur- 
gundy and his nephew the duke of Orleans, the king's broth- 
er. These two prmces bore an inveterate hatred to each 
ether, and their two duchesses also entered into the same feel- 
ings of enmity. The duchess of Burgundy, who was very lU- 
lempeied and disagreeable, and prided herself on having been 
the heiress of Flanders, hated the duchess of Orleans, and af- 
fected to despise her, because she was of inferior birth to her- 
eelf. The duchess of Orleans was Valentina, daughter of the 
duke of Milan. She was very beautiful and engaging, though 
of a very high spirit. She had great influence over the pooi 
king, and sometimes when he was in the paroxysms of mad- 
ness, his attendants would send for Valentina, whose presence 
would instantly calm his violence. 

In 1403 the duke of Burgundy died His son John suc- 
ceeded to his possessions and to his ambition, and the struggle 
for power was carried on between the two cousins with even 
more bitterness than that which had characterized it before 
in the contentions between the uncle and nephew. The his- 
tory of France is at this period little else but a history of the 
outrages committed by these two selfish and vindictive men. 
At last the duke of Burgundy filled the measure of his guill 
by causing the duke of Orleans to be assassinated in the streets 
of Paris. Valentina and her children called loudly for justice 
on the murderer, and the duke of Burgundy was cited to Paris 
to answer for his crime. He came, but attended by such a 
numerous body of armed men, that the council found it neces- 
sary to acquit him. The duke of Orleans left three sons, 
Charles, Philip, and John. Besides these he had an illegiti- 
mate son named the count de Dunois. Charles, the young 
duke, entered a protest against the acquittal of the duke of 
Burgundy, and called on all France to revenge his father's 
death. But the father had made himself so odious by his 
misconduct, that no one listened to the appeal of his son : on 
th3 contrary, the Parisians received the duke of Burgundy into 
their city ; at which Valentina, who was a woman of ungov- 
emed temper, actually died of grief and rage. 

The party of the Burgundians now gained the ascendency 
in affairs ; the opposite party were called Armagnacs. The 
f oUng duke of Orleans had married a daughter of the couu 



23& CHA&LES VI [CaiP. XXi 

of Armagiiae, and suffered himself to be governed Ly hia 
father-in-law. The Armagnacs assumed the badge of a white 
BCirf with a St. George's cross ; that of the Burgundians waa 
a St. AndreAv's cross upon a red scarf. Both parties endeav- 
ored to possess themselves of the king's person, and to govern 
in his nar\e. But all they understood by government was to 
oppress ihi people, and to imprison and put to death (if they 
could) those whom they considered their enemies. The king, 
during his short intervals of reason, would sometimes make at- 
tempts to rid himself of both Burgundians and Armagnacs , 
but these efibrts only tended to increase the confusion. 

Meantime the queen, Isabella of Bavaria, led a licentious 
life, neglecting the king and her cliildren, who were often in 
want of absolute necessaries, while she was sharing in the 
plunder of the people. Part of that plunder she spent in friv 
olous extravagances ; the rest she laid up to make a fund for 
herself, in case she should find it necessary to abandon France 

During all this time France and England remained at 
peace. The reign of Richard II. had been too weak and 
frivolous, and that of the usurper Henry IV. too full of trou- 
bles, to allow either of them to engage in a foreign war ; but 
on the accession of Henry V. the case was altered. That 
young prince was energetic and martial, and, being at peace 
at home, was able to be enterprising abroad. He revived the 
almost forgotten pretension of Edward III. to the crovvm of 
France, and with no other pretext declared war on France, 
and landed at Havre, i^.ugust 14, 1415, with 36,000 men. 
His first operation was to lay siege to Harfleur,* which, though 
bravely defended by the citizens and a few neighboring gen- 
tlemen, yet, receiving no aid from the government, was obliged 
to surrender. The loss of Harfleur seemed first to rouse the 
contending parties at Paris to a sense of their danger. The 
oriflamme was unfurled, and an army collected ; but the jeal- 
ousies and animosities among the nobles occasioned so many 
impediments to its march, that Henry traversed the country 
from Harfleur nearly to Calais without meeting any thing to 
oppose his progress. But, to use the quaint words of an old 
historian, " the very abundance of the country, aided by the 
chmate, had been fighting the battles of the land." The heat 
of the weather, and the quantity of fruit wh"ch the English 
had indulged in on their march, had occasioned so much ill* 
ness among them, that, by the time Henry reached Agincourt, 
his army was greatly reduced in nunibers. Of those who r« 

• Very near Havre, on the northern coast. 



A.D 1415.>, CHARLES VI. 23 j 

mai.ned, many were so weak with illness and fatigue, that they 
could scarcely sit upon their horses. 

At Agincourt, on October 24th, 1415, tne French army, 
commanded by the constable d'Albret, came up with the Eng- 
lish ; and on the following day France experienced a still 
more disastrous defeat than even those of Cressy and Poitiers. 
The constable committed the great error of marshaling hia 
men on a spot of ground too small for their vast number (which 
v/as four times greater than that of the enemy) ; so that the 
soldiers impeded each other for want of room. The ground 
also was wet and marshy, and the footmen, at every step, 
sank up to their knees in mud. The knights and nobles 
rushed on without order to the front of the army, and scarcely 
any officers were left to command the main body, which soon 
gave way. It is a remarkable fact, that the chief brunt of 
the day fell on the nobles, who suffered much more than the 
common soldiers. The dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, with 
1400 other gentlemen, were taken prisoners ; the constable 
himself and two of the duke of Burgundy's brothers, with the 
duke of Alencon, were among the slain. When the battle 
was over, Henry found himself too weak to improve his vie 
tory by any hostile proceeding ; he conducted his wearied sol- 
diers to Calais, and from thence embarked for England vdth 
his prisoners. 

This great and unexpected reverse, instead of uniting tho 
Burgundians and Armagnacs against the common enemy, 
only gave them another object of contention, namely, who 
should obtain the vacant office of constable. In this contest 
the count of Armagnac succeeded, and he, for a time, made 
himself master of Paris. 

The king had three sons , Louis, John, and Charles. The 
two eldest died very nearly together. The duke of Anjou (the 
king's cousin, and titular king of Naples) was accused of hav- 
ing poisoned them, to make way for Charles, the youngest, 
who had married his daughter. Charles, though only sixteen 
when he succeeded to the rank of dauphin, took an active 
part in affairs : he joined the Armagnacs, and by his advice 
his mother, who was become infamous by her vices, was shut 
up in the castle at Tours. She, however, regained her liberty, 
and, joining with the Burgundians, ever after pursued her soif 
with unrelenting hatred. 

On May 28, 1418, one of the gates of Paris was opened at 
night by a friend of the duke of Burgundy, and a party of his 
men i'ntered the town, and rode about the etreets, proclaim- 



«2 CHARLES VI 1.0hap. XXI 

ing, " Peace and Burgundy !" But this polluted word peact 
was only the prelude to a general slaughter of all the Arma- 
gnacs. The count himself was among the victims ; and the 
scenes of ferocity which at this time took place in Paris Lavti 
no parallel in the history of any other civiUzed country. 

At the commencement of the tumult, the life of the 
uauphin was saved by Du Chastel, the governor of the Bas- 
tile,* who woke him from his sleep, and, without giving him 
time to put on his clothes, hurried with him to the Bastile, 
where he kept him concealed tiU he could escape out of the 
city. 

The queen and the duke of Burgundy made a triumphant 
entry into Paris, while the streets were actually streaming 
with the blood of the murdered Armagnacs. Meanwhile 
king Henry landed a second time in France, and made him- 
self master of Rouen, and of the whole of Normandy, before 
the contending parties seemed aware of his presence. They 
now saw that it was too late to attempt to oppose him by 
force ; they therefore resolved to try what could be done by 
treaty. Conferences were held in a tent in a park, near 
Meulan,t between Henry and Isabella, who acted for her 
husband. But nothing definite was determined on, except- 
ing that Henry should marry the princess Catherine. The 
dauphin and the duke of Burgundy were present at these 
conferences ; but even here, though so much was at stake, 
their mutual hatred broke out, and each endeavored to coun- 
teract the object which the other wished to gain. 

The dauphin had an attendant who had formerly been a 
servant to the late duke of Orleans. This man, whose name 
was John Louvet, had long meditated to revenge his master's 
death, by assassinating, if he could, the duke of Burgundy. 
He and Du Chastel, who entered into his designs, endeavored 
to procure an opportmiity of effecting them, by persuading 
the dauphin to pretend an earnest wish to be reconciled to 
the duke. Historians are not agreed as to whether the 
dauphin was or was not privy to their plot. The Searchei 
of hearts alone knows whether or no, or in what degree h« 
participated in it. The duke and he had an interview, in 
which, with hatred in their hearts, they swore to assist each 
other as friends and brothers. They had another interview, 
August 28, 1419, on the bridge of Montereau en the Yonne ;J 

* A castle and prison in Paris. 

t North of the Seine, and a little east of tlie frimtier of Normand; 

t A branch of the Seine. 



AD. ;421.j CHARLES 1 2tW 

and Louvet and T)n Chastel, leaping a barrier which waa 
placed across the bridge for the security of each party, stab- 
bed the duke with their swords, as he was kneeling down tc 
kiss the dauphin's hand. 

The duke of Burgundy had only one son, who is distin- 
guished from the other princes of his house, by the title of 
Phihp the Good, duke of Burgundy. This prince had nevei 
taken a part in tlie disturbances and crimes of the times ; but 
this atrocious deed roused him to revenge. He entered into 
a friendly treaty with the king of England, and in the hope 
of forever excluding the dauphin from the throne of France, 
he procured Henry to be declared regent during the life of the 
present king, and entitled to the succession to the throne after 
his death. Charles, probably unconscious of what he did, 
was made to acknowledge Henry as his successor. Henry 
married the princess Catherine ; and the two kings of France 
and England, with their two queens, made a triumphant entry 
into Paris. 

The parliament of Paris consented to this appointment of 
Henry to the regency, but stipulated that the rights of the 
people should be respected, and that they should continue to 
be governed by their own laws. To these conditions, I be- 
lieve, Henry strictly adhered ; he, however, exercised one in- 
stance of severity, which was perhaps not displeasing to the 
Parisians, in putting to death LTle Adam, an infamous agent 
of the late duke of Burgimdy, and a man who had been par- 
ticularly active in the massacre of the Armagnacs. 

The daaphin, while these things were passing, had retired 
to Poitiers with a few friends. He was here joined by some 
of the members of the parliament and the university of Paris ; 
and though, to aU appearance, he was cast out from the 
throne, yet the hearts of almost all true Frenchmen were 
with him. The presence of the duke of Burgundy and of 
the English army, obhged them, however, to conceal their 
sentiments. 

The king of England was, in the autumn of 1421, obliged 
to return to England, leaving his brother, the duke of Clar- 
ence, his lieutenant-general in France. Clarence was slain 
in a skirmish v^dth a body of Scotch troops in the pay of the 
dauphin ; and Henry hastened back to France, declaring 
that he would not leave the dauphin a single tovra. ; but the 
ill state of his health prevented him from putting his threat 
into execution. He went to Paris, where he exhibited to the 
people his infant son (afterward Henry ^''I,) as their future 



^A CHARLES Vr. [Chap. XXi 

dng , and assembling a plenary court, he and his child wern 
both crowiied with royal diadems. This was nearly the last 
act of his life. He died at the palace of Vincennes, j\.ug-nst 
28, 1422, leaving his brother, the duke of Bedford, regent of 
France. 

On the 21st of the following October, Charles VI. ended 
his unhappy life. He died in the palace of St. Pol in Paris. 
He lived fifty-five years, and reigned forty-two years, thirty 
of which he had passed in a state of almost constant in- 
sanity. He married Isabella of Bavaria, and had three sons 
and five daughters 

(1.) Louis, (2.) yohn, died before their father ; (3.) 
Charles, succeeded ais father ; (4.) Isabella, married first, 
Richard II. of England ; and, secondly, the duke of Orleans ; 
(5.) Jane, married John de Montford, duke of Bretagne ; 
(t>.) Michella, married Philip, duke of Burgundy ; (7.) Cath- 
erine, married Henry V. of England ; (8.) Mary, a nun. 

That I might not break the thread of my narrative, I 
omitted to speak in their proper place of the affairs of Na- 
ples. Durazzo was slain in a popular tumult in 1385, and 
Louis II., the young duke of Anjou, took possession of the 
crown of Naples, and reigned there till 1399, when, having 
offended some of tlie nobles, he was driven from his throne* 
and retired to France. He died in 1417. In 1421, his son 
Louis III. made an attempt on Naples ; but he experienced 
nothing but a succession of disasters ; and at last " nothing 
remamed to him of his kingdom but the road out of it." 

In 1396, an expedition was sent from France to succor the 
king of Hungary, who was at war with Bajazet, the great 
Turkish conqueror. The expedition, failed, through the ill 
conduct of the French themselves. Their army was defeat- 
ad with dreadful slaughter near Nicopolis. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XXI. 

Richard. Did you not, George, think of Shakspeare's play 
of King Hemy V. when mamma came to that part about the 
poor EngUsh soldiers being so ill and tix^A before the battle 
of Agincourt ? 

George. I remember it very well, aud how the French' 
man describes the Enghsh army, and say? — 

Their horsemen sit I'lke fixed candlesticks, 

With torch staves in their h^nds, and thtjjj poor jades 



CoNV.j OHAELES VI. 233 

Lob down their heads, dropping the hide and hips ; 
The gum down-roping from their pale dead eyes. 
And, in their pulled dull mouths, the gimmal bit 
Lies foul with chewed grass still and motionless. 

Henry V., Act I V., Scene % 

By-tlie bye, mamma, what is a gimmal bit ? 

Mrs. Markliam. It means a jointed bit, running in rings 
We will ask your papa to be so kind as to read that fine play 
to us after tea. In the mean time it has reminded me that 
plays were first performed in France about this period. 

Ridtard. That was, if I mistake not, about the time tliey 
were fi;st introduced into England. 

Mrs. M. You are very right : the first theatrical repre- 
sentation we find spoken of in England was, I believe, in 
1378. In 1385 we find mention made in the history of 
France of a play exhibited in Paris in honor of the marriage 
of Charles VI. and Isabella of Bavaria ; but I do not under- 
stand whether this was the first exhibition of the kind oi 
not. It represented the history of our Saviour's passion and 
resurrection, and was made to last eight days. It was per- 
formed by monks. There were eighty-seven characters in 
the piece, and St. John was one of the principal speakers. 

Mary. I think acting plays was a very sUly employment 
for monks. 

Mrs. M. So I suppose the provost of Paris thought, foi 
he forbade them to act any more. But the king, who had 
been present at the representation, was so much pleased with 
it, that he incorporated the performers into a company, enti- 
tled "The Master, Governors, and Fraternity, of the Passion 
and Resurrection of our Lord." This fraternity proceeded 
to act the history of the Acts of the Apostles ; and some of 
these plays, written in very indifferent French verse, are still 
extant. Mysteries and Moralities next followed, much in the 
same manner as in England, The rage for all sorts of the- 
atrical representation in France was so great, that the priests 
found it necessary to alter the hour of vesper prayers to enable 
the people to attend both. 

George. I thmk it would have been as well if they had 
altered the time of the plays to suit the prayers. 

3Irs. M. The plays were considered as a species of relig- 
ious observance. They were represented on Sundays and on 
saints' days. They commenced at one o'clock at noon, and 
lasted about four hours ; and the price of admitf.ance for eacij 
person was two sous. 

Mary. I am sure that was little enough. 



1^36 CHARLES VI LChap. XX) 

Mrs. M. If we estimate the vt.iue of two sous at the 
time we are speaking of", you will find it was a h gh price for 
admittance to a play. 

Richard. I thought a sou was only equal to our English 
halfpenny ; and surely a penny was not much. 

Mrs. M. There is an old couplet which runs thus^ 

The real worth of any thing 
Is just as much as it will bring; 

and in the time of Charles VI. money in France was su 
scarce, that a sou went much farther than it does now. A 
sou a day was considered as very good pay for workman ; and 
from two to three sous was the price of a good pair of shoes. 

Richard. Then, after all, it cost at least as much to go 
to the play then as it costs us now. 

Mrs. M. It is commonly asserted that cards were invented 
about this time in France; but some authors suppose that 
they had been known long before, and that they were derived, 
through the Moors, from the East. At any rate, we first 
hear of them in France in this reign, when they were em- 
ployed to divert the melancholy of the king, during some of 
the less violent paroxysms of his disorder. It is very singular 
that no change should have taken place since in their form 
or figure. The cards which are played with now resemble, 
m all respects, those which were used to amuse Charles VI. 

Richard. I wonder if there was any meaning in the fig- 
ures on the cards, or if they were only meant to distinguish 
one from another. 

Mrs. M. At the time they were invented they were 
intended to convey a distinct meaning, the four suits being 
designed to represent the four classes of people ; the church- 
men, the military, the class of artificers, and the peasantry. 

Mary. I can not comprehend how hearts, spades, dia- 
monds, and clubs can express all that. 

Mrs. M. You shall hear. By the hearts were meant the 
ecclesiastics ; who were called in France choirmen ; and the 
French words for choir and heart are nearly the same. By 
the spades, which are, in fact, intended to represent pikeheads, 
are meant the nobles or military. By the square stones, or 
tiles, which we call diamonds, but which the French cill 
carreaux, was intended the artificers' class ; and, lastly, the 
suit which we call clubs, but which is, after all, a leaf of tre- 
foil, or clover, was meant tD represent the peasantry. 

George. This is really something quite new to me, and 
very diverting. 



Cosv.) CHARLES VI. 237 

Mrs. M. The French have also particular names for each 
of the twelve court cards. The names of the four kings are 
David, Alexander, Caesar, and Charles ; the four queens ara 
Argine, Esther, Judith, and Pallas ; the knaves, or knights, 
as the French call them, are Ogier the Dane, Lancelot, La 
Hire, and Hector de Galard. I must not forget a story re* 
lating to this reign, which I think will interest you very 
much, particularly if ^ou have not forgot the play you went 
to see last year, called " The Forest of Bondi, or Dog of Mon- 
targis." 

George. O ! I remember it very well ; for I shall never 
forget the dear dog Carlo, and all his clever tricks ! how he 
trotted along, carrying the lantern to show the place where 
the body of his murdered master was hid I 

Mrs. M. The circumstance from which the play is takott 
occurred in the reign of Charles VI., and is briefly this. — A 
man, named Aubri de Montdidier, was murdered in the For- 
est of Bondi, not far from Paris, by Macaire, his professed and 
mortal enemy, who concealed the body under a tree, and re- 
turned to Paris, satisfied that there had been no witnesses of 
the deed. In that he was mistaken ; for besides the watchful 
eye which witnesses every deed, Aubri's faithful dog had 
observed the whole transaction, and laid himself down on his 
master's grave, never leaving the spot, except to go in search 
of food. For this purpose he generally repaired to Paris, to 
the house of his late master's most intimate friend. Here he 
usually obtained food, and as soon as he was satisfied, he 
mstantly returned to the forest. The friend, surprised at this 
singular appearance and disappearance of the dog, resolved 
one day to follow him : he did so ; and as soon as they had 
arrived at the tree, under which Aubri had been, buried, the 
dog scratched away the earth, and disclosed his master's mur- 
dered body. From this time the dog attached himself to his 
friend, and would never quit him. It was observed, that 
Vfhenever he saw Macaire he always growled at him, flew at 
him, and showed every sign of anger, insomuch that Macaire 
was suspected to be the murderer ; and, according to the cus- 
tom of that time, of deciding upon a man's guilt or innocence 
by a trial at arms, Macaire was sentenced to a trial by com- 
bat with the dog. 

George. A duel between a man and a dog ! And pray 
what weapons were they to fight with ? 

Mrs. M. The dog had his natural weapons of claws and 
teeth ; besides which he had the advantage of a tub to wtire 



.J33 CiIARLES VI. [Chap. XXI. 

to when lie was weary. The man was only permitted to 
have a stick and a shield. The combat took place at Paris, 
ii the He Notre Dame, amid an immense concourse of people. 
It lasted so long that Macaire fainted through fatigue, and 
when he came to himself confessed his crime. A picture 
representing this singular combat was for a long time pr^ 
served in the castle of Montargis ; and I can show you a 
little sketch of some of the principal figures 




Combat between Macaire and the Dog of Montarois. 

Mary. I can understand how the real dog could, from 
love of his dead master, do what he did ; but I can not 
understand how the dog in the play can be made to do all 
these things, such as ringing the bell to call up the people of 
the inn, and all the rest. 

Mrs. M. Dogs are surprisingly tractable animals, and may 
be taught to do many things that seem against their natures ; 
but in regard to the rmging the bell, I believe I can let you 
into a little secret about it. In training the dog to act the 
part, a sausage is hung at the end of the bell-string, and, 
in jumping up to get at the sausage, the dog rmgs the bell ; 
and in time he learns to pull the string without requiring the 
bribe. 

George. Well, I am glad the poor fellow is taught bis 
lesson by bribery, and not by blows. 

Mrs. M. Before we leave ofi', I have one more circum 
stance to mention. There appeared in Germany, in the early 
part of the fifteenth century, certain bands of vagabonds, 
without religion, without laws, without a country. They 
had tawiiy faces, and spoke a kind of gibberish, which wa» 



J 322. J 



CHARLES VII. 



£39 



peculiar to themselves ; stealing and telling fortunes seemed 
to be their only business. Do you thiak you can guess whc 
these people were ? . 

George. I think they must have been gypsies. 

Ricliard. And in reality who are the gypsies ? 

Mrs. M. It has been a common notion that the first 
g5rpsies w^ere natives of Egypt, vv^ho refusing to submit to the 
Turkish yoke, abandoned their country. But though it ia 
hard to tiace the history of tliis w^andering race, I believe that 
the best informed people are of opinion that they came origin- 
ally from the East. 



CHAPTEPv XXII. 

CHARLES VII., SURNAMED THE VICTORIOUS 

[Years after Christ 1422-14G1.] 




Philip the Bold, 



John the Fearless, 
Dukes of Burgundy. 



Philip the Good, 



The dauphin was at Espailly, a petty castle in Auvergne,* 
when he first heard of his father's death. He immediately 
put on mourning ; but the next day he clothed himself in 
Bcarlet, and was proclaimed king by the princes and nobles 
who formed his little court. Charles was, at that time, about 
twenty years old. He possessed excellent abilities, and a good 

" A little so'ith of the center of France. 



MO CHARLES VII. [Chap. XXII 

heart, and occasionally acted with vigor ; but he commonlj 
suffered indolence and love of pleasure to stifle his better" 
qualities. 

Bjs countrj^men have given him the pompous title of the 
victarious, because in his time the English were driven out 
of France ; but he was, properly speaking, a spectator, rather 
than an actor, in the emancipation of his country ; and he 
much more deserves the name which I have sometimes seea 
given to liim, of " the icell served." 

Rheims, at Charles'? accession, was in the possession of the 
English ; consequently he could not be consecrated there as 
his predecessors had been. He was, therefore, crowned at 
Poitiers, and began his reign under every possible discourage- 
ment. He was so poor that he had little else but promises to 
bestow upon his followers ; but his affabihty and his grateful 
disposition served him at this time instead of wealth, and pro- 
cured him many faithful and zealous friends. His agreeable 
manners could not, however, entirely supply the place of 
money ; for we are told, that being in want of some boots, he 
was obliged to go without them, the shoemaker refusing to let 
him have them unless they were paid for. 

The regent Bedford, and some of Henry's valiant captains, 
were very active in the field, and the English were becoming 
every day more and more masters of the country. Orleans 
was at length the only remaining town of importance which 
Charles possessed; and, in 1428, the English forces, com- 
manded by the earl of Salisbury, laid siege to it. 

Sahsbury surrounded the town by a great number of tow 
ers, and put good garrisons into each ; but, according to the 
imperfect tactics of those times, he left many unguarded places 
between the towers, which enabled the count of Dunois, who 
conamanded Charles's troops, to bring succors, from time to 
time, into the town. By this means the garrison was enabled 
to hold out many months, during which time the brave Sal- 
isbury was slain, and was succeeded in his command by the 
earl of Sufiblk. At the approach of Lent the English regent 
sent to the Enghsh army a large supply of salted herrings un- 
der a strong escort. The French sallied out of the town to 
attack the escort, but were driven back again with great less. 
This battle was called the battle of the herrings, and the loss 
ol" it reduced the French to despair. They actually began to 
treat for a surrender ; but that they might not fall into the 
hands of the English, they offered to yield up their city to the 
duke of Burgiui "v. To this iiowever, the regent would uot 



.D. 1429,] CHARLES VII. Hi] 

.■onsent, and demanded " if it was reasonalle that he should 
beat the bush for the duke of Burgundy to catch the hare ?" 

The affairs of Charles were now reduced to the lowest ebb, 
and he was prepared, as soon as Orleans, which he considered 
as the main prop of his fortunes, should have fallen, to retire 
into Dauphiny as a last retreat. His fortunes were, however, 
unexpectedly retrieved by one of the most singular occurrences 
in history. You will have already guessed that this singular 
occurrence was the appearance of Joan of Arc, who is knowr 
also by the name of the Maid of Orleans. 

This girl was the daughter of a peasant of Domremy or 
the Meuse,* and by the strength of dreams, and, as she fan- 
cied, of apparitions of saints and angels, she believed herself 
divinely commissioned to rescue her fallen country. She ob- 
tained an interview with the king, and told him that she was 
destined to deliver Orleans from the English, and to take him 
to Rheims to be crowned. Some of the courtiers thought her 
an insane enthusiast : but Charles, either because he was 
willing to cling to a last hope, or else because he was really 
convinced that she spoke by divine authority, granted her re- 
quest that he would send her with an escort to Orleans. On 
her arrival there her presence inspired the garrison with fresh 
courage. She headed the troops in several sorties, in which 
they were always successful. The English soldiers could not 
exert themselves when she appeared. Believing that she was 
assisted by supernatural powers, they felt a superstitious dread 
of her, and so many of them fled from the army on that ac- 
count, that a proclamation was issued in England to appre- 
hend every soldier "who deserted from France " for feare of tha 
mayde." At last the English, on May 29, 1429, found them- 
selves obliged to raise the siege of Orleans. 

Joan having fulfilled what she believed was the first part 
of her m.ission, was now desirous to accomplish the second part, 
which was that of conducting the kmg to K-heims. In this, 
also, she succeeded, and he was consecrated by the archbishop 
of Rheims, July 7. It was now Joan's wish to resigs her 
military command, and to return to her native obscurity ; but 
this the king, having found her so necessary to his success, 
would not permit. 

But this very success was poor Joan's ruin ; for the French 
officers became jealous of her fame, and ashamed that a wo- 
man should have performed greater exploits than themselves, 

* The Meuse is in the northeastern part of France, and Domremy if KOf 
(Mr from its source 

T, 



ii2 CHARLES VJ'. li^hap. XX U 

xxi a ioxiii Irom the town of Compeigiie* she was abandoned 
by her companions, who, at the approach of the enemy, retired 
into the io-wn and closed the gates upon her, thus leaving hei 
alone amidst the enemy. She was pulled from her horse by 
a gentleman of Picardy : he relinquished her to John of Lux- 
emburg, the Burgundian general, who, for a large sum of 
money, gave her up to ths regent. 

Joan, by every law of honor and humanity, ought to have 
been considered and treated as a prisoner of war ; but the re- 
gent chose to regard her as a sorceress and a heretic. Ho 
obliged those members of the university of Paris who ^till re- 
mained ill that city to bring h er to trial for these offenses, and 
they and several bishops and doctors, who were her judger>, 
condemned her to perpetual captivity. But this the regent 
deemed too mild a punishment, and he found means to have 
it changed for one more severe. Joan, by the articles of her 
condemnation, was forbidden ever again to wear the habit of 
a man ; and Bedford, in. the cruel hope that she would not be 
able to resist the temptation of dressing herself in armor, 
caused a complete suit to be hung up in her cell. Poor Joan 
fell into the snare, and her barbarous persecutors having de- 
tected her with the armor on, pronounced her worthy of death, 
and condemned her to be burned alive. The sentence was 
executed May 30, 1431, in the market-place of Rouen. 
When at the stake, Joan exclaimed aloud that the hand of 
God was raised against the Enghsh, and that he would not 
only drive them out of France, but that his vengeance would 
also pursue them in their own country. And if we reflect on 
the miseries which the English experienced after their expul- 
sion from France, in the wars of the White and Red Roses, 
we may well think that her words were fully verified. 

At aU events, her death has fallen heavy on aU who were 
concerned in it. It is the " one great blot" in the otherwise 
spotless character of Bedford, the disgrace of her countrymen 
and judges who sanctioned it, and of Charles, who made no 
effort to save her. Mezerai says, that the judgments of God 
fell on. her judges, and that they all died violent and sudden 
deaths. I can not pretend to say how far this is true, but it 
is certain that the bishop of Lisieux, one of her judges, was 
so conscious of his crime, that he founded a chapel at Xiisieux 
in expiation of it. The king, who had shown his gratitude to 
Joan in her lifetime by ennobling her and her family, did tardy 
justice, tv/enty-four years after her death, to her memory, by 

• Tliirty or forty miles northeast cf Paris, on the Oisa 



A.D 1435.1 CHARLES VIE. 94J 

causing the jjrocess of her condemnatior. to be burned before 
a large assembly of prelates and nobles at Rouen. 

The history of poor Joan of Arc has led me on to anticipate 
the order of time, and to neglect in their proper place one or 
two particulars I ought to have mentioned. 

Among other things, I ought to have said that Charlea 
contrived, in 1424, to attach the duke of Bretagne, a weak 
and vacillating man, to his interest, by making his brother, 
Arthur of Bretagne, count of Richemont, constable of France. 
Phis man had many great and fine qualities, and served the 
king with a most faithful attachment ; but his zeal for his 
master's service often carried him farther than was just or 
politic. 

Charles had many very brave men in his service. Among 
those who are most frequently named in history are the count 
of Dunois, La Hire, and Saintraille ; but although they per- 
formed many vahant exploits, they were none of them en- 
dowed with great mihtary talents ; and it was said of Charles, 
that he had many brave captains, but no generals. He him- 
self might have been a good general if he had pleased, and 
whenever he exerted himself he displayed vigor and ability. 
But his habitual indolence made these exertions very rare ; 
and although the war was still kept up between him and the 
English, it was conducted without much activity on either 
side. 

The torpor on the part of the Enghsh was not the fault of 
the regent. He did all he could, but he could not counter- 
act the ill consequences of a quarrel which had taken place 
between his brother the duke of Gloucester, and the duke of 
Burgundy, which caused, for a time, a coolness on the part 
of Burgundy toward the English. The hearts of the French 
also, although they might dissemble their sentiments, for fear 
of the English arms, were all inclining toward their ovra. le- 
gitimate sovereign. To excite some feehng in favor of the 
young king of England (Henry VI.), the regent had him brought 
to France and crowned a second time in Paris. But tha 
pageant had no other efiect than to make the Parisians sigh 
the more for their own monarch. 

In 1435 the tide turned in their favor. The duke of Bui- 
gundy deserted the English, and made a separate peace with 
Charles. This peace, which is called the peace of Arras, waa 
celebrated throughout France with the most frantic expres- 
eions of joy. To the regent, Bedford, it occasioned, on th» 
otlier hand, so much vexation as to be the cause of his death 



^.D. 1437.] CHARLES VII 245 

The English affairs rapidly declinel from this time. The 
dukes of York and Somerset, who were successively regents 
of France, wanted the ability to stem the torrent that ran 
strongly against them ; and when the civil wars broke out in 
England, the contending parties were too much occupied at 
home to be able to pay attention to the affairs in .France. 

Paris was almost the first town that threw off the English 
yoke; and on Nov. 4, 1437, Charles made his public entry 
into his capital, after a banishment of seventeen years. 

The year 1438 is memorable on account of a famine, iol 
lowed by a pestilence, which caused so great a mortaUty in 
Paris and in the environs, that the wolves roamed about the 
nearly depopulated streets, and some children were carried ofi 
by them. 

In 1440 a short truce was agreed on between the Exigli.'sh 
and the French. Charles would now have given himself up 
to the enjoyment of his gardens (of which he was very fond), 
and of his other quiet amusements, had not his tranquillity 
and happiness been destroyed by the conduct of his eldest 
son. This young prince (afterward Louis XI.) had early 
shown a disobedient and malignant temper. When not more 
than sixteen years of age, he had joined some discontented 
nobles in a conspiracy against the king, Charles forgave him 
for this offense on account of his youth, and received him into 
his favor as before. But Louis made an undutiful and un- 
grateful return to his indulgent father. He behaved insolent- 
ly to his favorites, and often displeased them by the violence 
of his temper. When he was about twenty-two years old, he 
conceived an enmity to some person about the court, whom 
he engaged the count de Dammartin to assassinate. Dam- 
martin, either because he had never seriously intended to 
commit the deed, or else because he afterward repented of his 
engagement, refused to perpetrate the crime. These circum- 
stances coming to the knowledge of the king, he sent for his 
son, and most severely reprimanded him for his wickedness. 
The dauphin, to exculpate himself, threw the whole blame on 
Dammartin, who denied the charge, and offered to vindicate 
his honor by single combat with any gentleman of the dau- 
phin's household. The king, knowing too well the evil dispo' 
sitions of his son, felt persuaded of his guilt, and banished 
hira to Dauphiny, forbidding him to appear again in h's pres- 
ence for four months. 

At the expiration of that time, Charles expeetecl to have 
Boea him again, and that he would ha"\'e returned pejiitent 



846 onAULES VII. [Ohap. XXil 

and subdued. But Louis, on the contrary, refused to return, 
and, establishing- himself at Dauphiny, set himself up as his 
own master. He loaded the people with taxes, and treated 
them with the utmost tyranny. His conduct becoming in- 
supportable, the king sent Dammartin witli orders to arrest 
nim, and bring him to Paris. But Louis, having previous 
notice of his coming, fled to the duke of Burgundy, who re- 
ceived him with the greatest kindness, gave him money for 
his expenses, and assigned him the castle of Genappe, near 
Brussels, for his residence. Here he remained till his father's 
death, obstinately resisting every invitation to return, and re- 
paying the kindness of the duke of Burgundy by sovv^ng dis- 
sensions between him and the count de Charolois, his only son. 

In the mean time the truce with England had been broken. 
The war was renewed in 1448, and was carried on through- 
out to the disadvantage of the English. Talbot, who alone 
remained of all Henry's brave warriors, made a last efibrt to 
redeem the honor and interests of his country. He and his 
son were both slain in 1453, near Chatillon.* This defeat 
was followed by the complete ruin of the English, and soon 
nothing remained to them of all their boasted conquests in 
France except the town of Calais. 

Charles, though thus at last restored to the dominions of 
his ancestors, had little satisfaction in this prosperous situa 
tion of his affairs. His son, to strengthen himself still more 
against his father, had allied himself with the duke of Savoy, 
and had married his daughter — a step which was highly dis 
pleasing to Charles. Louis was also suspected (but I believe 
unjustly) of having caused the death of his father's mistress, 
Agnes Sorel, by means of poison. He was suspected also of 
designs on the life of his father, and to have bribed his serv- 
ants to give him poison in his food. The unhappy monarch, 
under this apprehension, refused all nourishment ; and when, 
at last, he was prevailed on to take some, it was too late to 
save his life. He died July 22, 1461. He was fifty-nine 
years old, and had reigned thirty-nine years. He married 
Mary of Anjou, daughter of Louis II., titular Idng of Naples, 
and had two sons and four daughters : 

(1.) Louis, who succeeded him. (2.) Charles, duke of 
Berri. (3.) Joland, married the duke of Savoy. (4.) Cath- 
erine, married the count of Charolois. (5.) Jane, married 
the duke de Bourb-ju. (6.) Magdelain, married the couni, 
dtt Foix 

* On the Seine, near its source. 



kS llJJji CHAR], BS VII Sd? 

Tn 1438 Cliarles called an assembly of his clergy at Bourges. 
In this assembly the Gallican church threw off much of itfi 
dependence on the pope. 

Charles, finding that there was a great want of infantry in 
France, ordered that each village throughout the Idngdom 
should furnish and pay a foot archer, who should be free from 
all taxes and subsidies. This corps, which amounted to about 
22,000 men, was called the Franc Archers. Charles also 
established the Companies, of Ordnance, which formed a body 
of about 9000 cavalry, and were tlie foundation of the French 
regular army. 

In 1440 the duke of Orleans returned from his long captiv- 
ity in England, He obtained his release chiefly by the good 
offices of the duke of Burgundy, who, being desirous to ter- 
minate the long feud between their families, assisted him in 
paying his ransom. When the duke of Orleans regained his 
liberty, he was received with great honor by the duke of Bur- 
gundy. These two princes lived ever after in perfect friend- 
ship. The duke of Orleans's first wife being dead, the duke 
of Burgundy gave him his niece in marriage, by whom he had 
a son, who was afterward Louis XII. 

The constable of France, Arthur of Bretagne, died a few 
years before the king his master. Some years before his 
death, he became, by the deaths of his brother and of his 
nephew, duke of Bretagne ; but he would never sufler him- 
self to be called duke of Bretagne ; preferring always the 
title of constable of France, and saying, " that in his old age 
he would be called by that title only which had given luster 
to his youth." On his death the dukedom of Bretagne de- 
volved on Francis, the son of his younger brother. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XXII. 

Mary. Pray, mamma, who was that Agnes Sorel, who 
was such a favorite with the king ? 

Mrs. MarJchxm. She was a lady of great beauty and ac- 
eomplishmentSj and much celebrated by the French poets 
«,nd historians, becaase she employed the influence she pos- 
sessed over Charles to rouse him from his natural indolence, 
and to urge him to exert himself for the recovery of his 
dominions. 

Mary. Then she must have been a very good woman. 

Mrs. M. She had some redeeming virtues with some very 



248 CHARLES VII. [CKiP. XXli. 

great faults. She was buried at Jumieges, in JNormaiitly, 
where a splendid monument was raised over her grave, ia 
which she was represented in a kneeling posture, with hex 
heart in her hand, which she was offering to the Virgin. 
Tnis monument was destroyed in some religious disturbances, 
and its place was supplied by a plain slab of black marble, 
which is still in existence, as the threshold stone to a house 
at Rouen. Agnes is sometimes called the Lady of Beauty, 
not because of her great personal attractions, but on account 
of a castle so called, which the king gave her. 

Mary. How glad that poor duke of Orleans must have 
been when he got his liberty again ! I hope they did not 
keep him shut up in a prison all those twenty- five years in 
England ? 

Mrs. M. Great part of that time he passed at Groom- 
bridge, not far from Tunbridge, in the custody of Richard 
Waller, an Enghsh gentleman. Waller had found the duke 
after the battle of Agincourt, lying among the slain, and, 
perceiving some life in him, carried him to Henry, who, as a 
reward for his care, appointed him guardian to the royal 
prisoner. 
• Mary. But was Groombridge a prison ? 

Mrs. M. No, my dear ; it was Mr. Waller's oviTi housti. 
It is still standing, and I have been told that a part of it was 
built under the directions of the duke. He also contributed 
to the repairs of the neighboring church of Speldhurst, where 
his arms may still be seen over the porch. 

Mary. I am glad he had such pleasant emploj^ments to 
amuse himself with. 

Mrs. M. He was also able to amuse himself witn writing 
poetry. I will show you a sonnet on Spring- ""^hich is sai(l 
to have been written by him. 

LE PRINTEMS. 

Le Temps a laissie son menteau 
De vent, dn froidure, et de pluye ; 
Et s'esfc vestu de broderye 
De soleil riant, cler et beau. 

H n'y a baste, ne oyseau, 
ftui en son jargon ne chante et crye ; 
Le temps a laissie son menteau 
De vent, de froidure, et de pluye. 

Rivifere, fontaine, et ruisseau, 
Portent eu livree jolie 
Gouttes d' argent, d'orfevrerie : 
Chascun s'abille de nouveau, 
Le Temps a laissie son menteam 



CojiT] CHARLES VII. 21« 

Richard. Many of the words are spell< d so differently 
from modeJa French, that T am not quite sure whether I 
understand it perfectly. I wish you would be so good as tc 
translate it for us. 

Mrs. M. I will read you a translation, which I copied 
from a mogazme. 

The Time hath laid his mantle by 
Of wind and rain and icy chill, 
And dons a rich embroiderie 
Of sun-light poured on lake and hill. 

No beast or bird, in earth or sky. 
Whose voice doth not with gladness thrill ; 
For Time hath laid his mantle by 
Of wind and rain and icy chill. 

River and fountain, brook and rill, 

Bespangled o'er with livery gay 

Of silver droplets, wind their way : ,, 

All in their new apparel vie, 

For time hath laid his mantle by. 

Ridmrcl. Pray, can you tell us what became of that bad 
tjueen Isabella of Bavaria ? 

Mrs. M. She seems to have been detained in a sort of 
custody by the Enghsh at Paris, who treated her with con 
tempt and neglect. Her hatred of her son continued unabat- 
ed to the end of her life, which, in fact, was terminated by the 
excess of her vexation at seeing him acquire possession of his 
kingdom. A monument was erected over her, in which, in- 
stead of the dog which it was customary to place at the feet 
of ladies in the monuments of those times, the sculptor sub- 
stituted the figure of a wolf, as an emblem of her cruel and 
rapacious disposition. 

George. By-the-by, mamma, that was very shocking about 
the wolves eating up the children in the streets of Paris. Are 
there any wolves in France now ? 

Mrs. M. I understand there are ; but they no longer range 
dbout the country in packs as they did formerly. They are 
only to be seen in unfrequented places, ■ and seldom more than 
two or tlii'ee at a time. 

Mary. I should be afraid to live in France for fear of the 
Avolves. 

Mrs. M. A gentleman, who has lived a good deal in 
Touraine, told me, that he had frequently seen a solitary 
wolf in his walks ; but that he never met w.'th one that 
showed an inclination to attack him ; at the sight of him 
they commonly slunk away into the nearest thicket. 

I.* 



i50 CHARLES VII. iChap. XXIL 

Geo', ^e. I supposi that wolves know by instinct that theit 
strength is in numbers. 

Mrs. M. I have just recollected that I omitted to mention 
in its proper place, the famous council of Constance, which, 
although it has no immediate connection with the history of 
France, is yet so important an event, that I ought not to have 
passed it over. 

Richard. Then will you be so good as to give us some 
account of it now. 

Mrs. M. I must go back to the year 1377, when pope 
Gregory XI. removed the papal see from Avignon back to 
Rome. He died in the following year, and after his death 
there was a great schism among the cardinals, who could not 
agree in the choice of the new pontiff. Those who were in 
the interest of Rome wished to elect a pope who would remain 
at Rome ; while, on the contrary, those who were in the 
interest of France, wished to bring back the papal see to 
Avignon. 

George. And which got the better ? 

Mrs. M. I can scarcely tell you. As the two parties 
could not agree in naming the same pope, they both chose one 
of their own, so that there were two popes. This schism lasted 
forty years, and caused continual disturbances throughout 
Italy. At last, there were three popes all at one time, Johp 
XXIII., Gregory XII., and Benedict XIII. The emperor 
Sigismond, who was very anxious to restore the peace of Italy, 
obliged John, much against his will, to summon a council at 
Constance,* for the three purposes of terminating the schism, 
of reforming the church, and of extirpating heresy. This 
council met on the feast of All Saints, 1414, and the emperor 
compelled John to make a pubhc declaration, that he would 
resign his dignity provided his two rivals would do the same. 
John, however, had no intention of keeping his word, but he 
dissimulated, for fear of the emperor, who kept him as a kind 
of prisoner. He now bitterly repented having come to Con- 
stance, and resolved to get away as soon as he could. But 
this, as the town was full of Sigismond's partisans, was no 
easy matter. At last, the duke of Austria, who was hia 
friend, contrived to favor his escape, by proclaiming a touma 
ment, during the bustle of which the pope got away in tha 
disguise of a postilion. 

Maty. O ! what a comical figure he must have made. 

Mrs. M. Particularly if he was dressed hke this figure o/ 
* Iq Switzerland. 



Tout.] CHARLF.S VIl. «5I 




A French Postillion of the Fiftebnth Cek'xcrt. 

a French postillion in the time of Charles VI. But to go on 
with my story. The emperor was very angry with the duke 
of Austria for assisting John in his escape ; he laid him under 
the ban of the empire, and would forgive him only on condi- 
tion that he gave up the fugitive pope. John was suspended 
from his pontifical powers, and imprisoned for about three 
years at Heidelberg, at the end of which time he was released 
on his consenting to acknowledge Martin V., who had been 
elected pope by the members of the council. Thus in 1417 
an end was happily put to the schism which had so long em 
broiled Italy, and the more happily, because Martin was a 
peace-making, good man. 

Richard. This council of Constance managed the affair 
of the schism very well. Pray, what was done in regard to 
heresy and the reformation of the church ? 

Mrs. M. I believe nothing was done toward reforming the 
church ; but the members of the coimcil thought they did a 
great deal toward extirpating heresy by burning John Huss 
and Jerome of Prague, who were followers of the doctrines of 
Wickliffe. The death of Huss seemed the more shocking, 
because he had been induced to obey a summons to attend 
the council under promise of the emperor's protection; but 
when he came there, Sigismond withdrew his protection, and 
suffered him to be given up to his persecutors. 

Miclmrd. And was Jerome of Prague betrayed in the same 



manner 



M73. M. He had not been summoned to the council ; but 
hearijf.^' of his friend's a.rips;t, he came t:) Constance with « 



252 CHARLES VII. [Chap. XXli 

view to assist and comfort liirn. Being here intimidated h^ 
the violent spirit which he found raging against their opinions, 
he endeavored to fly from the town ; but he was overtaken 
and brought back in chains, and confined for nearly a year in 
a dark dungeon. He was then brought to trial, found guilty, 
and condemned to be burned alive. Poggio Bracciolini, a 
learned Italian, who was present at his trial and death, has 
left us a very uiteresting account of his death in a letter to 
his friend. 

Richxtrd. How 1 should like to see that letter ! 

Mrs. M. You may read it in Mr. Shepherd's life of Pog- 
gio. In the mean time I can give you some extracts froir 
it. 

"I must confess," says he, speaking of Jerome's ap- 
pearance at his trial, " that I never saw any one who in 
pleading a cause, especially a cause on the issue of which his 
own life depended, approached nearer to that standard of an- 
cient eloquence which we so much admire. It was astonish- 
ing to witness with what choice of words, with what closeness 
of argument, he replied to his adversaries. — It is a wonderful 
instance of his memory, that though he had been confined 
three hundred and forty days in a dark dungeon, where it was 
impossible for him to read, and where he must have daily 
suffered from the utmost anxiety of mind, yet he quoted so 
many learned writers in defense of his opinions, and supported 
his sentiments by the authority of so many doctors of the 
church, that any one would have been led to believe that he had 
devoted all the time of his imprisonment to the peaceful and 
undisturbed study of philosophy. His voice was sweet, clear, 
and sonorous ; his action dignified, and well adapted either to 
express indignation or to excite compassion, which, however 
he neither wished nor asked for ; he stood undaunted and 
intrepid, not merely contemmng, but, like another Cato, long- 
ing for death ; he was a man worthy to be had in everlasting 
lemembrance." 

" When he arrived at the place of execution, he strip- 

pe<l liimself of his garments, and knelt down before the stake, 
to which he was soon after tied by wet ropes and a chain ; 
then great pieces of wood, intermixed with straw, were piled 
as high as liis breast. When fire was set to the pile he began 
to sing an hymn, which was scarcely interrupted by the smoke 
and flame. I must not omit a striking instance, which showa 
the firmness of his mind. When the executioner was abou^ 
lo apply the fire b(?hind him, that h« might not see it, he said 



uoNT-i CHARLES VII. ^53 

' Come, ohis way, and kindle it in my sight ; for, if 1 had beeii 
afraid of it, I should never have come to this place.' " 

George. I am very glad you remembered to tell us about 
ihe council of Constance, for I should have been sorry not to 
have heard this letter. 

M?-s. 3T. I must not forget another very memorable event, 
the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, which took place 
in the year 1453. The empire of the East had been so much 
encroached upon by these overwhelming invaders, that at last 
it was reduced to little more than the city of Constantinople, 
which the Turks made many efforts to gain. But the city 
being well defended, and having a fine harbor, by which sup 
plies could readily be introduced, held out successfully during 
many attacks. At last, in the month of April, 1453, the sul- 
tan, Mahommed II., brought an immense force to Constanti- 
nople, and blockaded it by sea and land. The emperor, Con- 
Btantine Paleologus, being full of youthful courage, was nothing 
daunted, and refused many offers from Mahomrned to give up 
his city on reasonable terms. After some time a mutiny arose 
in the Turkish army, and the sultan found that the best vi^ay 
to pacify his soldiers was to lead them to the immediate as- 
sault of the city, with the promise that if they took it, it should 
be given up to plunder during three days. The next morning 
(May 29) as soon as it was daybreak, the Turks rushed to the 
walls like so many beasts of prey. The Greeks defended 
themselves with the valor of desperation ; but they were so 
much outnumbered by the assailants (who, as soon as one party 
of troops was slain could supply their places with others), that, 
overpowered by fatigue, they were at last obliged to give way. 
The Turks broke into the city ; and I need not pain you with 
describing the scenes which followed during those dreadful 
three days of carnage and rapine. At the end of that time 
the sultan made his triumphal entry, and Constantinople has, 
as you know, ever since been the capital of the Turkish em- 
pire. 

George. I wonder all the Christian people in the world 
did not rise in a body and drive out those infidel Turks. 

Mrs. M. The capture of Constantinople, although a most 
calamitous event, was yet productive of some advantages to 
the rest of Europe. 

Richard. I can not comprehend what good it could pos- 
sibly do them. 

Mrs. M. The good it produced was that several learnej 
aien who fled from Constantinople, settled in Italy, Fran.?a 



251 CHARLES VII. LChap. XX\. 

and other countries, ar d engaged in teacliing the Greek Ian 
guage, and many of the Hheral sciences. The good effects of 
this increase of knowledge soon began to show itself by an in- 
crease of civilization and of humanity, among people who had 
till then been taught to consider cruelty as no crime, and ig- 
norance as no misfortune. 

Marv. And pray, mamma, what became of the courage- 
ous yoiang emperor ? 

Mrs. M. It is not exactly known whether he was slain by 
the Turks, or squeezed to death by the press of people in try- 
ing to escape by one of the gates. Theodore Paleologus, a 
descendant of this family, found his way into Cornwall, and 
his tomb may still be seen in a village church near CaUing- 
ton. 

Gem-ge. Do you continue to take any of your curious sto 
ries out of Froissart's chronicles ? 

Mrs. M. The chronicles of Froissart come down no later 
than the year 1400. But there is what may be considered a 
continuation of them, or at least a continuation of the history, 
by Monstrelet, a gentleman of Picardy, who, as he tells us, 
" wished to avoid indolence by writing down the events of hi? 
time." 

George. And is his book entertaining ? 

3Irs. M. His chronicles are, for the most part, very duL'. 
and dry ; but here and there I have found an amusing pas- 
sage. As I perceive that Mary takes a great interest in the 
various revolutions of dress, she shall hear what he says on 
that subject. " In the year 1461, the ladies laid aside their 
long trains to their gowns, and in lieu of them had deep bor- 
ders of furs of minever, marten, and others, or of velvet and 
various articles, of great breadth. They also wore hoods on 
their heads of a circular form, half an ell or three quarters 
high, gradually tapering to the top. Some had them not so 
high, with handkerchiefs wreathed around them, the corners 
hanging down to the ground. They also wore silken girdle*, 
of a greater breadth than formerly, with the richest shoes ; 
with golden necklaces much more trimly decked in divers 
fashions than they had been accustomed to wear them. At 
the same time men wore shorter jackets than usual, after the 
maoner in whloh people are wont to dress monkeys, which 
Was a very indecent and impudent thing. The sleeves of 
their outward dress and jackets were slashed, to show theil 
nade white shirts. 

" Tlaeir hair was so long that it covered their eyes and face 



K.D. 1461.J 



LOUIS XI. 



255 



and on thoir heads they had cloth bonnets of a quarter of an 
ell in height. 

" Knights and squires, indifferently, wore the most sump- 
tuous golden chains. Even the very varlets had jackets of 
Bilk, satin, or velvet ; and almost all, especially at the courts 
of princes, wore peaks at their shoes of a quarter of an ell in 
length. They had also under their jackets stuffings at the 
shoulders to make them appear broad, v/hich is a vanity, and 
perchance displeasing to God." 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

LOUIS XL 
[Years after Christ, 1461—1483.] 




Louis X[., and an Archer of his Guarp. 

Lotus was in Brabant* when he heard of his father's death ; 
and lest any attempt should be made to place his youngei 
brother on the throne, he instantly mounted his horse, and, 
accompanied by the duke of Burgundy, and his son Charles, 
count of Charolois, afterward sumamed Charles the Bold, 
hastened to RheimSj where he was crowned by the archbishop 

Louis was at this time in the thirty-ninth year of his age. 
He had considerable shrewdness and penetraiion, but evOT^ 
• In HoUaud 



25fi LOUIS XI [Chap. XXIIl 

faculty of his mind was perverted by being directed to unwor 
thy ends. He was cruel, malignant, and ungrateful, and waa 
never known to forgive an injury or repay a kindness, unless 
indeed, he had some selfish object to gain by it. He was, 
moreover, so excessively sunning and artful, that his whole 
life was one continued act of deceit. He was avaricious by 
nature, but often prodigal through policy, saving even to par- 
eimony in his personal expenses, especially in his dress, which 
commonly consisted of a coarse short jacket, but hberal in hia 
presents (which might, indeed, more properly be called bribes) 
to persons whose services he could in no other way secure. To 
sum up his character, he was a stranger to every kindly feel- 
ing and nattral affection ; and never was there a man more 
feared and distrusted by his contemporaries, and more hated 
and despised by posterity. 

From K-heims Louis proceeded directly to Paris, accompa- 
nied by a train of thirteen or fourteen thousand soldiers, which 
effectually secured him a good reception. The first act of his 
government was to deprive his brother of every thing his fa 
ther had given him, excepting the county of Berri. He dis- 
missed his father's ministers, and turned off all the officers of 
the household, and replaced them by men of low extraction 
and mean habits, who, he thought, would be more subser- 
vient to his will than he could expect persons of higher station 
to be. 

These measures excited the indignation of the nobles, and 
a league, called the League of the Public God, was formed 
against the king, at the head of which were the dukes of Bern 
and Bretagne. The count of Charolois also joined this con- 
federacy. The professed friendship between him and Louis 
was now turned to deadly hatred, the warm and impetuous 
nature of the count having been worked up to the highest 
pitch of resentment against the heartless, ungrateful king, 
who, forgetting all his obligations to the house of Burgundy, 
now took every opportunity to weaken and injure it. Among 
other provocations, Louis had secretly tampered with the 
duke's ministers for the restitution of Abbeville, Amiens, Cor- 
bie, and Saint Quentin, four towns on the Somme, which had 
been ceded to the duke of Burgundy by Charles VII. at the 
treaty of Arras. 

The confederates agreed to assemble their forces before 
Paris. The fiery and impatient Charolois was the first in 
the field, and entered France with a powerful force, before his 
allies were in readiness to join him. After waiting for theip 



A.D. 1465.] LOUIS XL 267 

ten or twelve days in the neighborhood of Parifc, ho crossed 
the Seine, and advanced to meet the army of the duke of 
Bretagne. 

The king, who had been in the Bourbonnois quelling a dis- 
turbance, was at this time hastening to Paris, with the inten- 
tion of throwing himself into the city before the confederates 
ehould have joined their forces. His army, and that of the 
JJurgundians, met unexpectedly near Montlheri, and although 
neither party wished an encounter at that moment, yet they 
found themselves so near together that they could not avoid it 
The battle took place July 16, 1465. Both Charles and 
Louis (who on all necessary occasions could master his natural 
timidity) showed great bravery, and the victory was so unde- 
cided that both parties claimed it. Louis, whose main object 
was to reach Paris, did not stay to follow up any advantage 
he might have gained, and left Charles master of the field. 
This day, as Philip de Comines tells us in his memoirs, was 
an unfortunate one for Burgundy ; for the conqueror was so 
much elated with his own prowess, that from that day forth 
his mind was wholly turned to military affairs, and he thought 
of nothing but of wars and conquest, by which he brought 
much misery on his people, and, in the end, destruction on 
himself. 

Louis accomplished his object of getting into Paris, and 
used every art to gain the affections of the Parisians, who he 
feared might be seduced by the allies to open their gates to 
them. Doing a violence to his nature, he affected great re- 
spect for the citizens, and complied with their wishes in ap- 
pointing a council of eighteen persons chosen from among the 
principal citizens, and the m.embers of the parliament and 
the university, and promised to do nothing without their 
advice. He also proclaimed a reduction of the taxes : but all 
this lasted only while the danger did ; when that no longer 
existed, he revoked these beneficial acts, and persecuted those 
persons with unremitting malevolence at whose suggestions 
he had been induced to agree to them. 

Not long after the battle of Montlheri, the dukes of Berri 
and Bretagne, with the rest of the confederates, joined Char; 
olois. Their army, which amounted to 100,000 men, might 
have been very formidable to Louis, if they had aU acted in 
unison But among so many chiefs there was no leader ; and 
although they encamped close to Paris, they let three weeks 
slip ])y without doing any thing of importance. In the mean 
time Louis had quitted Paris t^ procure reinforcement?, and 



£5jr LOUIS Xr. [Chap. XXIll 

had le-enlered it again. "While each party was expecting 
that a decisive blow would be struck, Louis, who feared to 
trust to the event of a. battle, sought to dissolve, by policy, 
tliis formidable confederacy. It is said, that he pursued this 
line of conduct by the advice of his friend and ally, Francis 
Sforza, the usurping duke of Milan, who exhorted him to 
break the league, at whatever cost, by granting to each of the 
chiefs whatever he demanded. 

Louis accordingly accomplished this great object, and at 
little more expense than that of a few promises, aiid with no 
other loss than that of his honor; a loss which he little re- 
garded. He made a treaty with the confederates, called the 
treaty of Conflans, by which the disputed towns on the 
Somme were to remain to Burgundy ; the duke of Berri was 
to have Normandy, and all the other malcontents were also 
satisfied — well pleased in beheving that, in securing their own 
interests, they had done all that was required by the league 
of the public good. They did not, however, gain so much as 
they had reckoned upon ; the crafty king finding various 
means to evade the fulfillment of lais promises. 

The duke of Berri had no sooner taken possession of Nor- 
mandy than he was driven out of it by his brother, and com- 
pelled to take refuge in the court of the duke of Bretagne, 
who, by giving him that refuge, drew on himself the lasting 
resentment of the vindictive king. 

In 1467, Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, died. His 
son succeeded to his vast possessions, but not to his wisdom 
and prudence. He was passionate and indiscreet to the last 
degree : he was also brave and generous ; but as he was never 
swayed by reason, both his good and his bad qualities were 
always in extremes. 

On succeeding to the dukedom, Charles was for some time 
fully occupied in quelling some disturbances among his Flem- 
ish subjects ; but as soon as his affairs were a little settled in 
that quarter, he set himself to revenge the cause of his friend 
and ally, the duke^ of Berri, Louis's ill-treatment of whom he 
violently resented. Louis, believing himself more equal to 
cope with his ardent and hot-headed antagonist in the cabinet 
than the field, and having great confidence in his own powers 
fif persuasion, was desirous of a personal conference with him. 

A meeting was accordingly agreed upon, which was to take 
place in October, 1468, at Peronne, a town on the Somme,* 
belonging to the duke of Burgundy. 

* The Sjmme is in the northeastern part of Fracce. 



ft.. L). 146-3.! LOUIS XL 259 

Louis, to make a display of his entire confideivce in the 
duke's honor, repaired to Peronne, accompanied only by the 
cardinal de Balue, the count de Saint Pol, and a few other lords. 
On entering the town he was greatly alarmed to find there sev- 
eral French noblemen whom he had banished, and others whom 
he knew to be his enemies, and he requested of the duke that, 
for his greater security, he might be lodged in the castle. 

A short time before Louis came to Peronne, he had sent 
some of his emissaries to foment the disturbances in Flanders, 
and, from some unaccountable oversight, he had either forgot- 
ten to countermand these orders, or else had supposed that his 
machinations would not take immediate effect. It, however, 
happened, that at the very moment when he was now at Pe- 
ronne, using all his arts to cajole the duke of Burgundy, his 
agents succeeded in exciting the people of Liege to open 
rebellion against their sovereign. 

The news of this revolt soon reached Peronne, and the dis- 
covery of the king's treacherous dealing threw Charles into 
the most fearful transports of rage. He instantly ordered the 
gates of the castle to be closed and strictly guarded, thus 
making the king a prisoner, and permitting only a few of his 
personal attendants to have access to him. Thus the artful 
and perfidious Louis saw himself completely entangled, in a 
net of his own contriving. He became a prey to the most 
painful reflections and bitter regrets ; not, I fear, regrets at his 
own perfidy and wickedness, but at the folly and want of fore- 
thought which had led him thus to put himself in the power 
jf a justly irritated enemy. To add to his uneasy reflections, 
he saw himself lodged, at the foot of the tower in which 
Charles the Simple had formerly been confined, and where 
he died, as was supposed, by poison. 

Louis, however, did not let his presence of mind forsake him 
m this emergency. When his perturbation had a little svib- 
sided, he began to consider how he could extricate himself. 
He found, means through those few of his servants who were 
permitted, to go in and out of the castle, to send tempting 
messages and rich gifts to those of the duke's attendants, 
who, he supposed, had. most influence with their master. 
Among these was the celebrated Philip de Comines, who be- 
came impressed with a great opinion of the king's wisdom, 
and perhaps also of his liberality. Comines afterward quit- 
ted the service of the duke, and entered into that of the king, 
and has left us in the memoirs of his own times one of the 
ablest and most entertaining histories ever written. 



2»JJ L^oIS XL Lt-HAP, XXIIJ 

In ihe mean time Charles was in. a state of luind scarcely 
more enviable than that of Louis. On the first day he wag 
almost like a madman, and it seemed as if nothing would ap' 
/>ease him but the death of his victim. On the second day 
he became more calm, and held a council on the conduct to 
be observed toward his royal prisoner. This council lasted 
during the greater part of the day, and part of the night, but 
without coming to any determination. Charles was some 
times inclined to keep the king prisoner for life, and some 
times resolved to send him to his brother the duke of Berri 
At other times he seemed as if he only wanted a little encour 
agement from his council to put him to death at once. During 
the whole of the third night he was in a perpetual agitation. 
He neither undressed himself nor slept, but kept alternately 
lying on his bed and walking up and down his apartment 
with Comines, who now and then threw in a word represent- 
ing the impolicy as well as the dishonor of proceeding to ex- 
tremities. He at length became more tractable, and toward 
morning was so far pacified as to consent that the king should 
have his liberty, on conditions which were sufficiently humili- 
ating, but which Louis was glad enough to accede to. 

One of these conditions was, that he should give up to his 
brother the counties of Champagne and Brie ; another was, 
that he should accompany the duke to Liege, and assist in 
quelling the insurrection which he had himself excited. 

To Liege, accordingly, these two princes went, and there 
Charles gave a free rein to his passion. The insurgents were 
soon subdued, and the innocent and the guilty fell indiscrimi- 
nately in the shocking butchery which followed. If Louis 
was capable of feeling any remorse or pity, he must have 
been touched at witnessing the miserable consequences which 
his own arts had brought on these unhappy people ; but that 
is a point on which his annalists are silent. When the work 
of blood was over, and the duke's vengeance was sufficiently 
sated, he and Louis separated, with many fair words and 
comphments, and such a show of civility, as, considering the 
circumstances and the characters of the two men, was a mere 
mockery. 

It added to the king's vexation at this result of his expe- 
dition to Peronne, that the Parisians were very facetious at 
his expense, and at the failure of all his fine contrivances. By 
way of being revenged on them, he deprived them of all the 
tame animals and birds they kept for their amusement ; and 
«uch was the meanness of his jealousy, that he had a registel 



4.D. 1468. j LOUIS XI Z6F 

kept of every tning the parrots and other talking birtls said, 
to find out if any of them had been taught to pronounce that 
unlucky word Peronne. 

When Louis was once more safe in his own dominions, ht- 
was in no disposition to fulfill the conditions of the treaty 
which necessity had forced from him at Peronne. Not chooS' 
ing to give to his brother Champagne and Brie, a territory 
which would place him near his ally the duke of Burgundy, 
he persuaded him to accept instead the duchy of Guienne. 
Charles was violently enraged at this infringement of the 
treaty, and was on the point of enforcing the observance of 
it, when the death of the duke of Berri in 1471 removed the 
subject of the dispute, although it did not prevent the war 
from breaking out. 

The duke of Berri's death was occasioned by eating part of 
a poisoned peach, and Louis was strongly suspected of having 
contrived, or at least cormived at it. Nothing was ever proved 
to confirm or clear away this suspicion, but Charles acted on 
the belief that it was a true one, and to avenge his friend's 
death, carried the war into Picardy, where the unoffending 
inhabitants suffered the punishment of the crimes imputed to 
their unprincipled king. 

This war, with the interruption of occasional truces, lasted 
many years ; but I shall pass over the particulars, which are 
rendered exceedingly intricate by the chicanery and double 
dealing of Louis of Luxembourg, count of St. Pol. This 
man had been originally attached to the side of Burgundy, 
and took an active part with the confederates in the war for 
the public good. A short time before the treaty of Conflans, 
the king, in hopes to detach him from that party, offered him 
the sword of constable of France. St. Pol accepted of the 
offer with great profession of loyalty to Louis, and at the same 
time he made Charles believe that he accepted it solely with the 
view of being the better able to be secretly serviceable to him. 

In this manner did this perfidious man sell himself to two 
masters, betraying the secrets of the one to the other, and 
deceiving both. His chief object v/as to promote the war 
between France and Burgundy, because during a time of war 
his emoluments as constable were enhanced. At last, his 
treachery became so evident, that both Charles and Louis 
were equally convinced of it. And at a time when they hap- 
pened to be in tolerable good humor with each other, they 
mutually agreed that whichever of them should first get the 
constable intc? his power should either put him to death in 



26y i OUIS XI. [Chap. XXiU 

eight days, or else give him up to the other When. St. Po 
heard of this agreement, he took good care to keep out oi 
their way, and shut himself up in the tjwn of St. Quentin, 
where he remamed for some time in sesurity. At last, find- 
ing himself hard pressed hy Louis, and thinking he was no 
longer safe at St. Quentin, he determined to trust himself to 
the more generous nature of the duke of Burgundy, and ob- 
taining a safe conduct from him, he sought refuge in his ter- 
ritories. Louis instantly claimed his victim ; Charles suffered 
his resentment against St. Pol to balance every other con 
sideration, and delivered him up. He was conveyed to Paris, 
and condemned and executed as a traitor, Dec. 19, 1475, and 
never was any one less pitied or lamented. 

Some months previous to the death of the constable, Ed- 
ward IV. of England, to assist his ally the duke of Burgundy 
(who had married his sister), brought a numerous army into 
France, through " the ever open gate of Calais." Louis, who 
bore in mind the terrible days of Cressy and Agincourt, trem- 
bled at the thoughts of an English army in his kingdom, and 
resolved to spare no pains to get peaceably rid of them. He 
did not find this a veiy difficult matter. Edward had been 
pressed into the war against his incHnations, and being grown 
unwieldy and indolent, willingly listened to Louis's overtures, 
and unhesitatingly accepted of a considerable bribe, under thf 
softened name of tribute, on consideration of returning with 
his army to England. 

Louis did not content himself Avith bribing only the king. 
He secured the suffrages of Edward's ministers by bestowing 
on them gifts and pensions. He treated the English during 
their stay in France with the greatest apparent respect and 
courtesy, though all the time he hated them in his heart. To 
keep tho soldiers in good humor, he gave them a great enter 
tainraent at Amiens.* 

With " his good brother of England" he requested a per 
sonal interview ; still, however, so much distrusting him, thai 
he did not venture to meet him otherwise than on a bridge 
(the bridge of Pequigni), with a grated barrier between them. 
In short, his conduct to the English can not be better de- 
scribed than by comparmg it to that of some timorous person, 
who by coaxmg words is trying to keep dovra. a mastiff which 
he thmks is longing to fly at him. At last, the treaty being 
concluded at Pequigni, Aug. 29, 1475, Eiward and his host 
departed, and Louis recovered from the terror he had been 

* On the Somme. 



/LD 1477 ^ LOUIS XI 26,V 

thrown into. A chief article of the peace was, thai the son 
of the king of Frajice should marry the king of England'i* 
eldest daughter. 

The duke of Burgundy was much displeased at this treaty, 
and refused to he included in it. He, however, not long af 
terward, made a truce with Louis for nine years. This truce 
he made because his ambition -was now impelling him tc turn 
liis anns against his other neighbors. 

He attacked the duke of Lorraine, and dispossessed him of 
his dominions. He invaded a part of Savoy,* and he nerit 
endeavored to subjugate the Swiss ; but from, these hardy 
mountaineers he met with an unexpected repulse, and was 
defeated by them with great loss at Granson, April 5, 1476. 
This defeat, instead of checldng his ambitious projects, only 
made him pursue them the more franticly, and against all 
prudent counsel ; and with an inadequate force he rashly 
made another attack on the Sv/iss. But in a battle fought 
near Nancy,t in January, 1477, his army was totally defeat- 
ed, and he himself lost his life. 

The circumstances of his death are truly trngical. He 
had for some time given his chief confidence to an Italian 
favorite named Campobasso, who, under a show of devoted 
attachment, had (from some cause which is not known, but 
which is commonly supposed to have been the having once 
received a blow from him) vowed his destruction. Campo- 
basso had purposely, on many occasions, persuaded Charles 
into very impolitic measures, and now, in the field of Nancy, 
m the time of his greatest need, he withdrew with that part 
of the army which was under his command, and stationed 
some of his own creatures about the duke's person, with or- 
ders to kill him if they saw that he was likely to escape with 
life. These orders were but too well executed. The day 
after the battle the dulce's body was found wounded in three 
places. He had fallen in a kind of morass with his face in 
the water, which in the night had frozen so hard that his bodj 
could not be extricated from it but by pickaxes. The duke 
of Lorraine, who commanded the Swiss army, gave his fallen 
adversary an honorable funeral. What was something more 
in unison wdth the mournfulness of the occasion, he pronounced 
over the dead body, taking it by the hand, this short but sira 
p)e oration : — " God rest thy soul ; thou hast, given us much 
tiouble and grief." 

* Savoy is east of France, and south of Switzerland. 
f In the eastern part of France, in LoiTaine. 



264 LOUIS XI. rCHAP. XX HI 

Thus fell Charles the Bold, the last duke of Burgundy. By 
his death, his vast possessions, which extended from the north- 
ern limits of Holland to the frontiers of Switzerland, descended 
lo his only child Mary, who, young and inexperienced, knew 
not how to contend with the difficulties with which she found 
herself environed. The resources of her country had been 
exhausted, and the bravest of her subjects had fallen in the 
late wars ; and she was at ome assailed by a tumultuous 
council, a disobedient people, and a powerful and vindictive 
enemy. That enemy was Louis, who made no attempts to 
conceal his joy at the duke of Burgundy's death. He iu' 
stantly seized on the duchy of Burgundy, on the plea that in 
default of male heirs it had fallen" to the crown of France ; 
and at the same time he made an attack on some of Mary's 
towns in Picardy. 

When the news of the duke's death arrived at Ghent, the 
citizens immediately took the government into their own 
hands. They slew the magistrates, and refused to acknowl 
edge the young duchess's authority. As Mezerai expresses 
it, " being both proud and ignorant, they meddled with every 
thing, and did nothing but what was wrong." 

The duchess placed her chief confidence in her mother-in- 
law (Margaret of York) and in a few of the ancient servants 
of her family. These persons, although they were her firm 
and attached friends, appear to have been but indifferent ad 
visers. By their advice she tried to excite compassion and 
feelings of honor in the hard and insensible heart of Louis. 
She sent embassadors to him with offers of peace, and wrote 
him a letter in which she promised to unite her dominions 
with those of France by a marriage with the dauphin, then 
a boy of eight years old. Louis, who preferred taking his 
own crooked ways, returned an ambiguous answer ; and soon 
afterward, when some deputies from the people of Ghent ar- 
rived at Paris, he gave them the duchess's letter, in the hope 
that it would embroil her with her subjects, who, he knew, 
would greatly resent her having offered to give up herself and 
her territories to France, without their knowledge or consent 

It turned out as he had expected. When the deputies re- 
turned to Ghent, they showed the duchess her letter in a 
public assembly, and vehemently reproached her for her con- 
duct. Nor was that all ; they condemned as traitors her 
chancellc^r Hugonet and the lord of Imbercourt, by whose ad 
vice she ha 3 acted, and gave heiir only three hours to prepare 
for death. 



\.D. 1477 1 I.OUIS XI. '»6S 

The pool- young duchess was in the deepest affliction. At 
once humiliated at the pubhc disclosure of her negotiation 
with Louis, and driven to despair at the impending fate of 
tier faithful servants, she ran about the market-place, where 
the scaffolds were erecting, and with disheveled hair and dis 
Drdered dress, she implored and entreated for their lives. But 
her entreaties were in vain. They were executed almost in 
her sight. The citizens were now more overbearing than 
ever. They made the duchess their prisoner, debarred her 
from the company of her mother-in-law, and wished, to force 
on her a husband of their own choosing. But in that partic- 
ular Mary found means to elude their vigilance, and entered 
into a treaty of marriage with Maximilian, eldest son of the 
emperor Frederic III. The Flemings agreed to this mar- 
riage, which took place in 1477. They did not dispute 
Maximilian's authority over them while Mary lived ; but on 
her death, in 1481, by a fall from her horse, they refused to 
submit any longer to his control. 

Mary left two children, Philip and Margaret. The people 
of Ghent took these children under their own guardianship. 
They brought up the boy as their future duke, and making 
peace with Louis, they betrothed the little girl, who was not 
two years old, to the dauphin, and sent her to be edi\r;ated in 
France. 

This event is said to have hastened the death of the king 
of England, who had so confidently built on his own daugh- 
ter's marriage with the dauphin, that he had been accustom- 
ed to style her " the dauphiness." 

Louis had now outlived all his most feared and hated rivals, 
and had, either by secret treachery or by open violence, arrived 
at a greater degree of power and authority than any of his 
predecessors had attained. But noAV was the time when, in- 
stead of enjoying, as he had hoped, the friiits of his labors, 
he was to pay the penalty of his crimes. His constitution 
was breaking down, and the fear of death filled him with in- 
describable horrors. He had the first warning of its dreaded 
approach in March, 1480, when, as he was sitting at dinner, 
he was suddenly deprived of speech and sense. He remained 
three days in that condition, and although he partially re- 
covered from the efiects of this attack, he never afterward 
regained his former health. As his bodily strsngth declined, 
the malevolence of his temper increased, and hi became more 
jealous and suspicious than ever. Conscious, as he himself, 
in an exhortatioo to his son, acknowledged, " tha t he had 

M 



S(3J LOUIS XL [Chai X.X1IL 

grievously oppressed his people," he lived in continual dread 
of their retaliation. He shut himself up in his castle of 
Plessis, near Tours,* and in addition tc the customary fortifi- 
cations, caused it to be surrounded viith ditches, in which 
were placed iron spikes ; and, not daring to trust to the fidel- 
ity of his own subjects, he had a band of foreign archers, 
who kept guard at the gate of the castle day and night 
The castle could only be entered by a wicket, which admitted 
but one person at a time, and he sufi^ered no person of ranlc 
to be lodged within it, excepting the lord of Beaujeu, who had 
married his eldest and favorite daughter, and who, being a 
person of weak abilities, he supposed to be the less capable of 
forming dangerous machinations against him. 

Louis had so great a dread of the nobles and princes of 
the blood, that although he detained the duke of Orleans and 
gome others near his court, he treated them with distant 
coldness, and kept them in a sort of imprisonment. His 
chief and familiar associates were Oliver Daim, his barber, 
Tristan I'Hermite, his hangman, and Jacques Coctier, hi& 
physician. To the last of these this most tyrannical mon- 
arch was an absolute slave. The artful Jacques pretended 
that an astrologer had predicted that his death should take 
place a few days before that of the king, and the king, con- 
sequently, watched over his life with anxious care, loaded 
him with presents, and submitted to all his insolence and 
humors. 

The more Louis was conscious of his declining state, the 
more he sought to conceal it from the world. Instead of the 
mean and sordid dress he was accustomed to wear, he nov/ 
put on magiuficent apparel, and would take occasion to show 
himself at the windows of his castle, and then hastily with- 
draw himself, that the people who saw him might not have 
time to observe his meager and altered looks. He imported 
from foreign countries many rare animals, which could not 
be procured without much expense and difficulty. He had 
dogs from Spain, Hons from Barbary, elks and deer from Den- 
mark and Sweden, and yet when they were obtained, he 
cared not even to see them. But though he endeavored to 
deceive others, he could not deceive himself. The nearer 
death approached, the more his dread of it increased. Tc 
ward it off, he tried all the arts of superstition. He caused 
himself to be anointed with the holy oil from E-heims ; be 

* Tours is ou the Loire, a little more tban ore hundred miles from iii 
mouth, 



A..D. 1433.] LOUIS XI. -^m 

loaded himself with the relics of saints, and sent processions 
to their shrines, praymg that they would prevent the north- 
east wind from blowing, because it seemed to increase his 
disorder ; but he placed his greatest hopes in a hjly hermit 
0^ Calabria, who had the reputation of working miracles, and 
of restoring the sick to health by his. prayers. He sent for 
him to Tours, and frequently on his knees besought him to 
prolong his life. The holy man in vain represented to him 
that the power of prolonging it lay only ^vith God, and bade 
him turn his thoughts towa?"d the next world, instead of 
thinking so exclusively of thi?. 

Louis was at length sensible that these miserable struggles 
to avert the inevitable hand of death must soon terminate. 
Beheving himself to be on the point of expiring, he ordered 
his chief officers to go to his son at Amboise,* and to consider 
him as their master. He also sent with tihem his hawks and 
his hounds, and all that was then considm'ed as forming the 
royal establishment. 

He soon after felt momentarily a little revived, and would 
have recalled them, but death prevented his purpose. He 
died Augijst 30, 1483, having lived sixty-one yes-Jrs, and 
reigned twenty-two. 

When very young, he was married to Margaret, daughtei 
of James I., king of Scotland ; but this princess, although 
amiable and gentle-tempered, never could acquire liis regard, 
and died of grief, as it was said, at his neglect and unkindness. 

His second wife, Charlotte of Savoy, was not more happy ; 
and although he acknowledged that she was ".a virtuous and 
loving wife," he treated her with harshness and inattention, 
alleging as his chief cause of being offended with her, that 
she expressed more compassion than he approved of for the 
house of Burgundy. By her he had three children, one son 
and two daughters : 

(1.) Charles, who succeeded him. (2.) Anne, married 
Pierre de Bourbon, lord of Beaujeu. (3.) Joan, married the 
duke of Orleans, afterward Louis XII. 

Mezerai teUs us, that Louis caused more than four thou- 
sand persons to be put to death by different irodes of execu- 
tion, many of which he himself took pleasure in vvdtnessing. 
He kept the cardinal de Balue for many years shut up in au 
iron cage, as a punishment for his numerous political intrigues, 
and only released him from his imprisonment on the cardinai'd 
feigning himself at the point of death. 

* A little east of Touis, on the Loire. 



g«a LOUIS XI. lChap. xxni 

Louis atidcl greatly to the territories of the crown of 
France. He won a considerable district from the house of 
Burgundy. The county of Boulogne he acquired by purchase 
The counties of Maine and Anjou were bequeathed to him 
by Charles of Anjou, count of Maine, who also left to him 
the rich inheritance he had derived from his uncle Regniei 
of Arijou. This inheritance included Bar and Provence, to- 
gether witi. the imaginary claims of the house of Anjou to 
the crown of Naples. 

In this reign the art of printing was introduced into France. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XXIII. 

George. What in the world could induce that count of 
Maine to leave his territories to such an old rogue as king 
Louis ? 

Mrs. Markham. It was possibly on the score of their re- 
lationship, and not from any feehng of regard. The king's 
mother, Mary of Anjou, and the count's father were brother 
and sister : old Regnier of Anjou, often called king Rene, was 
another brother. 

Richard. Pray, mamma, was not that Regnier of Anjou 
the father of our queen Margaret of Anjou ? 

Mrs. M. He was. After spending the early part of his 
life in struggling to obtain the kingdom of Naples, he, in his 
old age, retired to Provence, and consoled himself for the loss 
of a crown by the amusement of a garden, and in the cultiva- 
tion of plants. We may thank him for that lovely ornament 
of our gardens, the Provence rose. 

Mary. I am sure that I, for one. am very much obliged 
to him. 

Richard. I wondei if therfe evei WJis anothei man so 
cold hearted and wicked as this Louis the eleventh. 

Mrs. M. The Roman emperor Tiberius seems to have 
very much resembled him. A striking parallel may be drawn 
between their two characters, and it is hard to say which was 
the worst. 

Richard. Louis was the worst, because, being a Chris- 
tian, li2 ought to have known better. 

Mrs. M. His Christianity, I fear, did him little good 
The fear and love of God, and the wish to serve him, was no 
part of the religion of Louis. His religion was the most ab^ 
ject superstition He paid great devotion to the bones of 



CoNV.] LOUIS XI. ■ 269 

saints, 3 /id always carried some relics about his peisoii. He 
also wore a little leaden image of the Virgin in his barette 01 
cap, to which he frequently addressed his prayers. He had 
also many religious scruples, and among them was one which 
consisted in an unwillingness even to make oath by the cross 
of St. Lo. 

Mary. And what did he thmk there was wrong in that ? 

Mrs. M. It was not so much his fear of doing wrong, as 
of incurring danger, which made him avoid this oath. He 
believed that whoever made oath falsely by that cross, would 
come to an untimely death before the end of the year. He was, 
therefore, too prudent to venture on doing any thing so rash. 

George. There was something like conscience in that : he 
was not blind to his own faults. 

Mrs. M. He was by no means without a conscience, and 
he took great pains to keep it clear by frequent confessions. 
Philip de Comines was once present, at an interview between 
the king and his priest, and diyly observes, " that there wa-s 
no great matter in the king's confession, for he had confessed 
himself not long before." 

Louis, however, had one merit. * Little as he respected 
justice in his own conduct, he was very rigorous in requiring 
his subjects to observe it toward one another. There are also 
two or three other praiseworthy things to be said of him. He 
graciously received and protected those learned Greeks who, 
after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, sought refuge 
in France. 

He instituted parliaments at Dijon* and at Bordeaux: 
and, lastly, he established posts and couriers in different parta 
nf France for the conveyance of letters. 

George. And that was the best thing he ever did. 

Mrs. M. These posts had their origin from the king's 
restless and suspicious temper, and from his impatience to 
learn promptly whatever was passing in all parts of his king- 
dom. They were employed solely in the service of the king. 
It was not until 1 630 that the letters of private individuals 
might be conveyed by the public posts, 

Richard. There is one thing that puzzles me very much 
in the history of this king, and it is how so bad a man could 
find faithful and attached servants who would execute all his 
schemes. 

Mrs. M. He had a wonderful skill in finding out the 

* In the eastern part of the province of Birgund/. Bordeaux is ii: the 
•autl westeri part. 



•70 L0T71S XL [Chm XXIfl 

tempers and dispositiojis of those persons whom he wished tc 
make use of, and had great art in binding them to his will by 
means of their avarice, vanity, or self-love. Comines tells us, 
that one of his ways, when he wanted to gain any person, 
was to whisper, as if confidentially, in his ear, which gave 
him importance in his own eyes and in those of others, who 
would look on him as intrusted vsdth important affairs. He 
had also a way of cajoling by a pleasant and facetious humor, 
which he could at all times command. He could also, when 
he chose it, overawe and confound, by his keen and sarcastic 
wit, those whom he conversed with ; and lastly, he could, 
as he saw occasion, be liberal in his gifts, and severe in 
his punishments ; so that, between hope and fear, he kept all 
whom he employed in a very strict dependence on his will. 

George. I shall have greater pleasure in reading that en 
tertaining book Quentin Durward, now that I know so much 
more about Louis XI. • 

Mrs. M. The historical parts of that very delightful novel 
must not be read as real history, for the ingenious author has 
not thought it necessary to adhere critically to fact, and has 
in many places accommodated the history to his story, instead 
of giving himself the trouble to make his story accommodato 
itself to history. The character of Louis, which forms so 
conspicuous a part of the book, is drawn throughout in a very 
masterly manner, and is evidently taken from the memoirs of 
Comines. 

Richard. Will you be so kind as to read us a little of 
Comines's book ? It must be very entertaining. 

Mrs. M. You shaU have a part of his account of the king's 
last illness. 

" Our king was now at Plessis, with little company but his 
archers : — to look upon him one would have thought him 
rather a dead than a living man ; he was grown so lean, it 
was scarce credible. 

" His clothes were now richer and more magnificent than 
they had been before ; his gowns were all of crimson satin, 
lined with rich martens' furs, of which he gave to several, 
without being demanded ; for no person durst ask a favor, or 
scarce speak to him of any thing. He inflicted very severe pun- 
ishments, for fear of losing his authority, as he himself told me 
He removed officers, disbanded soldiers, retrenched pensions, 
and sometioaes took them away quite. So that, as he told 
me not many days before his death, he passed his time in 
making and ruinino men ; which he did in order to be talked 



Dosv.] LOUIS XI. a? I 

of, and that his subjects might take notice he was not yel 
dead." 

George. That was a mighty singular amusement for a 
dying man, methinks. 

Mary. There was something very melancholy in the 
death of the duke of Burgundy. I could not help being very 
sorry for him. 

Mrs. M. It was scarcely possible for two human beinga 
to be more totally opposite than were Charles and Louis ; 
they had only one common quality, and that was ambition. 

Ricliard. And even their ambition was very different. In 
Louis it was thriving and prosperous, and in Charles it was 
every thing that was ruinous. 

Mrs. M. The riches and prosperity of the Netherlands, 
before that country was ruined by the misconduct of Charhjs, 
exceeded that of any other people of Europe. Bruges, Ant- 
werp, ajid Arras, which last city was famous for its tapestry, 
were the staples of the northena nations. The dukes of Bur- 
gundy were more powerful than many kings, and their courts 
were the most splendid in Europe. 

After the battle of Nancy, an immense quantity of the rich 
spoil of the Burgundians fell into the hands of the Swiss, who 
unaccustomed to the refinements of luxury, did not know what 
to do with it. They garnished their miserable huts with 
pieces of beautiful and costly embroidery : and so little knowl- 
edge had they of gold, that many of them bartered pieces of 
that valuable metal for copper, which they esteemed the more 
useful of the two. 

Richard. They were probably very happy in their igno 
ranee. 

Mrs. M. There is a singular history relating to a diamond 
which once belonged to Charles of Burgundy. The story is 
this. Charles wore this valuable jewel in his hat at the bat- 
lie of Nancy. It was found among the spoil by a Swiss sol- 
dier, who sold it to a French gentleman of the name of San- 
cy. In his family it remained above a hundred years, until 
a descendant of the family, who was captain of the Swiss 
soldiers in the service of Henry III., was employed by that 
monarch to procure him a reinforcement of soldiers from 
Switzerland. The king, being driven from his throne by a 
league which was formed against him among his subjects, 
was so totally without resources, that he was unable to send 
any money for the payment of the troops. He therefore bor 
rowed fancy's family jewel, v hich was to be sent into Swit 



275 



CHARLES VIII. 



[Chap. XXIT 



gerland a& a pledge. Sancy sent the diamond by tine of hi» 
own servants, but he and the diamond both disappeared. . The 
king reproached Sancy for his creduhty in trusting so valuable 
a treasure to a menial ; and he, piqued both for his own credf I 
and that of his servant, in whose fidelity he had imphcit. re- 
liance, set out in search of him. He found that he had been 
waylaid and murdered, and that his body was concealed in a 
forest. Sancy, still confident in the poor fellow's zeal and in- 
legrity, caused the body to be disinterred and opened ; when 
it was found that, to preserve the jewel from the robbers, he 
had sAvallowed it. This diamond, which went by the name 
of " the Sancy," afterward became the property of the crown 
It was stolen in the general wreck of French royalty at the 
revolution, and no one now knows what has become of it. 

Mary. I only hope it will never come into my possession 
I should not like to wear an ornament having such a melan- 
choly history, and which seemed to bring misfortune on all 
who possessed it. 



^ CHAPTER XXIV. 

CHARLES VIIL, SURNAMED THE AFFABLE. 
[Years after Christ, 1483—1498.] 




A COCRTIER OF THE FIFTEENTH CeNTURY. ChARIES VIII. 

As Charles was in his fourteenth year, and might, according 
to the French law, have been considered old enough to rule 
alone, the late king had not appointed a regency. In consid- 



A..D 1488.] CHARLES Vlll 27i 

eration, however, of his son's weak health and bacz\ wa i dness 
of mind, he placed him under the guardianship of the lady of 
Beaujeu. 

The princes of the blood, and more particularly the dulie of 
Orleans, jealous of the power which Anne thus acquired, called 
an assembly of the states at Tours, with the hope of displacnig 
her. Contrary to their expectation, the states confirmed her 
authority ; but to pacify the nobles, a council of ten, of wnich 
the duke of Orleans was to be the head, was appointed to as- 
sist her in the government. Arme soon showed this council 
that their office was merely nominal, and took into her own 
hands the whole management of affairs. She was a very 
clever, strong-headed woman, and possessed great talents, with 
perhaps a little too much of her father's politic spirit. Sne 
had not, however, his cunning or malevolence, and was, on 
the whole, a very fine character. She was, at this ame, 
only twenty-two years old, but she cheerfully relinquished all 
the usual amusements of her age and sex, and gave herself 
up entirely to the business of the state. Her chief difficulty 
arose at first from the conduct of the duke of Orleans, who 
gave her many provocations, which she, having a high spirit, 
violently resented ; and at last, things came to that pass be- 
tween them, that Orleans, believing his liberty in danger, flea 
to the court of Bretagne, and put himself under the protection 
of the duke. 

Bretagne was, at that time, governed by Francis II., the 
last male descendant of John de Montford. He had no sons ; 
and the kings of France had begun to cast their eyes on that 
most desirable fief, which was now the only one whicn re- 
mained independent. The last descendants of the family of 
Blois had ceded to Louis XI. all their supposed claims on 
Bretagne, and the lady of Beaujeu and her young brother, 
who was early awakened to ambition, held themselves in 
readiness to urge these claims on the first opportunity. In 
tiirtherance of these designs, Charles entered into an alliance 
with some malcontent Bretons, and under pretense of assist- 
ing them, sent a large body of troops into Bretagne, who took 
possession of several towns for the king. The Bretons now 
saw their error in choosing such a dangerous ally. They 
reconciled themselves with their duke, and he, joining- his 
forces with theirs, assembled a numerous army, whicn en- 
countered the French near St. Aubin, July 28, 1488. The 
result of this battle was fatal to the Bretons. The duke of 
Orleans, who was fighting on their sid^, wa,s taken pri.soncr , 



874 CHARLES VIII. [Chap. XXIV 

and the lady of Beaiijeu, who had not forgot her own par- 
ticular gm.dge, caused him to be closely imprisoned in the 
great tower of the castle of Bourges ;* and, to make his cap- 
tivity doubly sure, she had liim shut up every night in an iron 
cage. 

The duke of Br3tagne was completely broken down by hia 
defeat at Saint Aubin. He made peace with Charles on 
very disadvantageous terms, and died soon after, from the ef 
fects of vexation. He left two daughters, one of whom died 
soon after her father. His other daughter, Anne, now sole 
heiress of the duchy, was only thirteen years old, but she 
possessed a strong and vigorous mind far beyond her years, 
and conducted herself with wonderful firmness and rectitude 
under very difficult and trying circumstances. 

The Bretons were in no condition to contend in arms with 
the king of France, and were urgent with their young duchess 
to marry, and give them a legal protector. Some of them 
pressed her to fulfill an engagement which her father had made 
for her with the seigneur d'Albret, whose brother had married 
the heiress of Navarre. Others, who had been gained over 
to the French interest, solicited her to terminate all her diffi- 
culties by marrying Charles. Anne was herself averse to 
both these alhauces. D'Albret was old enough to be her 
grandfather, and was notorious for his bad temper ; and 
Charles she regarded with particular aversion, as the enemy 
of herself and her race. In this perplexity she resolved to 
choose for herself, and selected the archduke Maximilian from 
among the list of her siutors. The archduke's character for 
easy good-nature appears to have been one cause which pre- 
possessed her in his favor. The marriage took place, by proxy, 
in 1489. But either from indolence, which was always 
Maximilian's bane, or that he was beset by other more press- 
ing cares, he neither came to claim his bride, nor sent an} 
troops to her aid. Charles, meantime, was preparing to ad 
vance into Bretagne ; and Anne, receiving no succor Irom 
MaximiUan, apphed to Henry VII. of England, on whom she 
thought she had a claim of gratitude for the protection which 
her father had given him in his distress. But Henry was 
cautious and tardy ; and Anne saw that she would have to 
wait long for his assistance. 

In these circumstances Charles renewed his suit for her 
hand ; but Anne, in addition to her former reluctance to 
marry him, now felt herself the affianced wife of the archduk 

* Directly south of Paris near the center of France 



k.D. 1491.] CHARLES VJII. 2?i 

Charles, believing that the duke of Orleans might, from 
fais former acquaintance, have some influence with her, re- 
leased him from prison, and sent him into Bretagne. He 
himself soon followed with a numerous army, and encamped 
at the gates of Pi-ennes,* where the duchess was keeping ^er 
little court. 

Anne, thus neglected by her betrothed husband, and ill 
assisted by her cold ally, now began to waver in the purpose 
ehe had formed. Charles, through the intervention of Or- 
leans, entered the city iitcognito, and was admitted to see 
her. It might be said of Anne, as Shakspeare has said of her 
namesake, in his play of Richard III. — 

Was ever -woman in this liumor -woo'd f 
Was ever woman in this humor won ? 

The result of the conference was, that she consented to marry 
him. The determination was received by the Bretons with 
great satisfaction. They stipulated with Charles for the 
preservation of their laws and privileges, and the marriage 
took place December 10, 1491. Thus was Bretagne annexed 
to the crown, and the whole of France, after a lapse of many 
centuries, again united under one sovereign. Anne soon forgot 
her former prejudices against Charles ; she loved him for his 
many amiable qualities, and made him an excellent and af 
fectionate wife. 

Charles, at the time of his marriage, was twenty-two years 
old. He had, for some time past, withdrawn himself from 
the tutelage of hLs sister ; he, nevertheless, always contuiued 
to treat her with respect and affection, and, in matters of 
importance, would generally ask her advice ; though, unhap- 
pily for himself and his kingdom, he did not always follow it. 
This young prmce was of a gay, lively nature, but so thought- 
Less and inconsiderate, and so deficient in judgment, that 
though he seems to have set out in life with one of the best 
hearts in the world, he was continually guilty of very unjusti- 
fiable actions. One of his follies was that of being always 
eager after some new scheme, which he would pursue for a 
time with great ardor, and would then relinquish as inconsid- 
srately as he took it up. He commonly acted from the im- 
pulse of the moment, was seldom to be convinced by reason; 
and had an invincible repugnance to business. Notwith- 
standing these great defects, Charles made himself much be- 
ioved. He was generous and forgiving to excess ; and had so 
gentle a temper, that it is recorded of him, that he never, in 

* In the eastern part of Bretagne. 



276 CHARLES VIII. fOHAP. XljtlV. 

the course of his hfe, said a single word which could give 
paiu to any human being. His faults might, in all probabil- 
ity, be attributed to his want of education. His early yeais 
had been passed in a kind of imprisonment in the castle of 
Amboise. His mean-spirited and jealous father, fearing that 
his son might at some time or other become his rival, gave 
him np instructors, and placed only low and unworthy persons 
about him. When he became king, he did not even know 
how to read. He endeavored afterward to supply the defi- 
ciencies of his education, and when he was about seventeen 
or eighteen years old, he applied diligently to study during 
several months. Then, either from the persuasions of hia 
young companions, who thought that a studious king would 
make a very dull master, or else from the changeableness of 
his own disposition, he threw aside his books, and gave him- 
self up to every kind of dissipation and frivolity. 

You may suppose that Charles's marriage with the duchesa 
of Bretagne caused both displeasure and surprise in Maxi- 
milian, whose daughter, you may remember, had been sent 
into France as Charles's affianced bride. Maximilian, there- 
lore, felt himself doubly injured both in his daughter's person 
and in his own ; but not being in a condition to declare war 
openly, he contented hijuself with taking the towns of St 
Omers and Arras* by stratagem, and entered into an alli- 
ance with Henry VII., who, at last, when it was too late, 
landed in France with a numerous force, and laid siege to 
Boulogne.! 

Charles, whose mind was now eagerly running on a new 
scheme, hastened to rid himself of these enemies, which ho 
did without much difficulty. Maximilian was pacified by 
receiving his daughter again, with all the towns that were to 
have been her dower ; and Henry, who was no warrior, glad 
iy relinqviished his projected conquest in France for a con 
<si.derable sum of money, and returned home. 

The project on which Charles was now bent was no other 
than the conquest of Naples, to which kingdom he pretended 
to have a claim, in right of the earl of Maine's bequest to 
liis father. Perhaps this claim would have been suffered to 
remain dormant, if it had not been fot the artifices of Ludo- 
vico Sforza, a man whose character stood pre-eminent (even 
ill that age, when such qualities were but too common) fot 
perfidy, ingratitude, and cruelty. Ludovico was uncle tti 

* In the province of Artois, in the northe astern j>art of Frarcc. 
t On the coast, northwest of Calais. 



A.D. 1494.1 CHARLES Vlll. 277 

GaleazzOj the reigning duke of Milan, and waited lo destroy 
his nepliew, and get possession of the duchy for himself. lie 
was, however, prevented from making any attempt against 
the young duke by the fear of drawing upon himself the ven- 
geance of Ferdinand, king of Naples, whose granddaughter 
Galeazzo had married. He therefore gladly fanned the flame 
of ambition which perhaps his arts had first lighted in the in 
considerate mind of Charles, and encouraged him to make ai 
invasion of Naples. 

Jt was in vain that the lady of Beaujeu, or the duchess of 
Bourbon, as she was now become, by the death of the loi'd of 
Beaujeu's elder brother, and all Charles's other most prudent 
advisers, represented to him the folly and madness of such a 
scheme. He was obstinately bent upon it. During two 
years it was the constant subject of debate in the royal coun- 
cil. At last, after many changes of plans, it was finally de- 
termined upon, and the king accordingly set out on this great 
enterprise in the autumn of 1494, but with so little prepara- 
tion that he could only collect an army of 18,000 troops, 
with little money and with no provisions for a campaign. 
Besides these troops, indeed, he was accompanied by a great 
number of young noblemen, who served as volunteers — a 
class of soldiers which might perhaps be useful in a day ot' 
battle, but which were a hinderance rather than a help in a 
long campaign, as being less able to endure fatigue, and less 
willing to submit to control, than the regular army. 

The Italian princes had had ample notice of the intended 
mvasion, and might easily have crushed it ; but they trusted 
that it would end in mere idle talk, and therefore made but 
little preparation against it. Ferdinand, king of Naples, and 
his son Alfonso, duke of Calabria, were men of the most 
notorious vices, as was also the pope, Alexander VI., and it 
seemed (to quote the words of Mezerai) " as if God had 
blindfolded their eyes and tied down their hands, and raised 
up this young prince to chastise them, who came with a smaU 
force, and was governed by a brainless council." 

Charles crossed the Alps, and reached Asti, in Piedmont. 
Here he fell ill of the smaL-pox, which detained him some 
time. By the end of October he was sufficiently recovered 
to continue his march ; but when he arrived at Turin hia 
reso irces were so completely expended, that he waa obliged 
to borrow the duchess of Savoy's and the marchioness of 
Montferrat's jewels, to raise money «n th«wi to pay liia 
trwpii 



278 CHARLES VIII. [CiiAh XX1% 

At Vigevano Charles was joimsd by his faithless ally Lude 
vigo Sforza, who staid with him till he was assured of the 
success of a dose of poison, which he had a short time befoic; 
found means to give to his nephew. As soon as he heard 
that Gateazzo was dead, he hastened to Milan and took pos 
Bes-sion of the dukedom, in violation of the rights of the infant 
son of the deceased duke. 

Galeazzo and Charles were sisters' children, and some of 
the council urged the king to proceed immediately to Milan 
to avenge his cousin's death and punish the usurper. But 
Charles's whole mind was set on conquering Naples, and he 
was not to be turned from it. He proceeded on his march^ 
and wherever he came he proclaimed himself " The friend of 
freedom, and the enemy of tyrants." Every gate was open- 
ed to him as he passed, and he was received in triumph into 
Florence and Rome. In Januar}^ 1495, he approached the 
confines of the Neapolitan territory. The old king Ferdi- 
nand was now dead, and had been succeeded by his son 
A.lfonso. 

When Alfonso heard that Charles had actually quitteJ 
Rome, and was advancing toward Naples, his terror was so 
excessive as in a manner to bereave him of his senses. While 
the French were yet many miles distant, he would fancy that 
he heard them in the streets, and that the very stones cried 
out, " France I France I" which was the war-cry of the 
French soldiers. He would not await their coming, and 
abandoning the throne to his son Ferdinand, he fled to Mes- 
sina, and shut himself up in a monastery. Here, without 
taking the vows, he practiced all the austerities of a monk, 
hoping thereby to expiate the sinfulness of his former life. 
The rigorous discipline which he imposed on himself occasion- 
ed disorders which soon terminated his miserable existence. 
Alfonso had amassed immense riches by every species of 
cruelty and fraud ; and it is singular that when he fled from 
Naples he showed no anxiety to save any thing except some 
garden-seeds. 

Ferdinand was a prince of great promise, and it was hoped 
that hi would retrieve the character of his family, which, foi 
several generations, had been notorious for its vices. When 
the French approached Naples, he marched to meet them at 
the head of his troops ; but at the first sight of the enemy 
he was seized with a sudden panic, and fled back to the 
town. The Neapolitans shut the gates against him, and the 
t«>rrified prince took refuse in the island of Jschia. 



A..D. 14950 CHARLES "V.Il SvS 

Charles in the mean time etiteretl Naples, and was re- 
ceived by the inhabitants as their deliverer from oppression 
Every place in the Neapolitan dominions, vv^ith the excep- 
tion of Brindisi, Heggio, and Gallipoli, yielded to him, and 
he achieved this great conquest without striking a single 
blow. 

This brilliant success absolutely turned the heads of the 
king and his council. Every kind of business and affair of 
state was neglected : nothing was thought of but diversions 
and feasting. Little care was taken to preserve the towns 
that had submitted. To some few, indeed, garrisons and a 
governor were sent ; but these persons, following the example 
of the king, were more occupied with their pleasures than 
with their duties. The soldiers lived at discretion, the stores 
were squandered, the inhabitants were ill treated, their goods 
pillaged, and their rights disregarded ; and the Neapolitans 
Ibund their new masters even worse than tlieir old ones, and 
that these professed friends of freedom were indeed very 
tyrants. 

The princes ua the other parts of Italy now began to re 
cover from the panic which the irruption of the French had 
thrown them into. The pope, the Venetians, and Ludovico 
Sforza, who now no longer needed the French, and wished to 
get rid of them, entered into a confederacy to drive them out 
of Italy. They were joined by Ferdinand, king of Aragon, 
and by Maximilian, who, by the death of his father, was now 
emperor of Germany. 

Philip de Comines was at that time at Venice on a mission 
from Charles, and he repeatedly warned his master of what 
was going on ; but Philip was too much immersed in amuse- 
ments to give heed to the warning, until the news reached 
him that a treaty had been actually signed by the confederate 
powers. He then thought it necessary to take care of him- 
self, and resolved to retrace his steps to France. About 4000 
of his troops he left in Calabria and Naples, under the com- 
mand of the count d'Aubigny and of Gilbert de Bourbon 
duke ie Montpensier, to the last of whom he gave the title 
of viceroy of Naples. Charles departed on the 20th of May 
with his diminished army, and reached Pisa without meeting 
with any impediment. Here he halted for a reinforcement 
of 9000 men which he had ordered the duke of Orleans to 
bring from Asti. But after waiting twelve or fifteen days 
he learned that the duke of Orleans was in no condition to 
bring him the expjctfd succor, being closely blockaded by 



98ft CHARLES VIII. 'Chap XXIV 

Sforza, in the town of Novara in the Milanese. The foi 
lowing was the cause of his being in that unfortunate pre 
dicament : Orleans, in right of his grandmother Valentina, 
had a claim to the duchy of Milan, and instead of leading 
the troops under his command to join the king, he could not 
resist a temptation which offered itself of making himself 
master of that town. He took the town, but before he had 
time to got it provisioned, he was shut up in it by Ludovico'a 
troops, and driven to the last extremities of famine. 

Charles having obtained some small reinforcements, which 
after all did not make his army exceed 90(J0 men, now push- 
ed forward toward Piedmont. His delay at Pisa had given 
the confederates time to concentrate their forces, which 
amounted to no less than 40,000 men, commanded by the 
marquis of Mantua. But even with this superior force the 
Italians did not venture to attack the French until they 
reached Fornova, where the confederate troops stationing 
themselves in a valley through which the French must nec- 
essarily pass, waited for their approach. Charles had here 
his first opportunity of showing himself to be a soldier. He 
came in view. of the enemy July 6th, 1495, and rushing for- 
ward with inconceivable bravery, he and his little army broke 
through their ranks and pursued their way, with the incon- 
siderable loss of only eighty men, leaving 3000 of the enemy 
slain. Nine days afterward he reached Asti, where he re- 
mained some time to refresh himself He here commenced 
a treaty with Sforza, who permitted the duke of Orleans to 
leave Novara. Charles, although the most generous and for- 
giving of men, never thoroughly forgave Orleans for letting 
his private interests interfere with his public duty, and ever 
afterward treated him with a degree of coolness. Heartily 
weary of mihtary enterprises, and impatient to enjoy the 
pleasures of peace at home, tlie king scarcely staid to con 
elude his treaty with Sforza, and hastened i.o Lyons, where, 
forgetting all weightier cares, he plunged into every kind of 
dissipation. 

In the mean while Ferdinand of Naples had issued from 
his retreat at Ischia. He applied to Ferdinand, king of Ara- 
gon, to assist him in expelling the French from the Neapolitan 
dominions, and that monarch sent him a body of Spanish 
troops, commanded by Gonsalvo de Cordova, surnamecl " tha 
Great Captain." The French commanders made what re- 
sistance they could ; but receiving no reinforcements, were 
Boon overpowered. Ferdinand was reinstated in Naples, and 



A..D. 1496.] CHAELES VIII. 281 

oefore the end of the year 1496 nothing remained of Charles's 
boasted conquests in Italy. 

These calamities roused the whole French nation to a de- 
sire of avenging the honor of their country ; and Charles was 
awakened from his dream of pleasure, and loudly calied on 
to lenew the war. He collected an army, and prepared to 
lar:e the command of it. Previous to his departure on this 
new expedition, he went to the abbey of Saint Denis, to 
take leave of the holy saints and martyrs who there lie bur- 
ied. He then proceeded as far as Lyons, on his way into 
Italy, and some of the advanced cavalry had already crossed 
the Alps, when suddenly the king's mind was changed, the 
enterprise was suspended, and afterward was wholly laid 
aside. Many different causes are given for this relinquish 
ment of the Italian war. Some persons attribute it to the 
king's displeasure with the duke of Orleans, who, it is said, 
could not conceal his satisfaction at the death of the king's 
only son, who died about this time ; but perhaps the change 
of plans may be sufficiently accounted for by the natural 
fickleness of Charles's temper, and the increasing feebleness of 
his health, which made him unequal to any active exertion. 

The king now pursued an entirely new course of conduct. 
He forsook all his former frivolous diversions, and seemed de- 
sirous to live only for the good of his people ; he set about 
reforming the abuses of the government ; he established a 
supreme council ; he dismissed all unjust judges and un- 
worthy persons from their offices ; he attended personally to 
the complaints of the poor ; he also meditated making a great 
redaction in the taxes, and it was his intention to have limit- 
ed his expenditure within the revenues derived from the royal 
domains, and from the ancient rights of the croAvn. But be- 
fore he could execute these good resolutions his life was sud- 
denly cut short. 

One day, when he and the queen were at Amboise,* some 
of the noblemen of the court were diverting then\selves Vv^ith 
playing at tennis in the fosse of the castle. Charles led the 
queen into a gallery from whence she could see the players. 
The doorway of this gallery, which Comines describes as 
uothing more than a dirty passage-room, was very low, and 
tlie king in entering struck his head against it. He, how- 
ever, took no notice of the blow, but entered into conversation 
v/ith the persons assembled there. To one of them he said, 
that he h/iped ne^-sr to commit another willful sin a.* long ai 
* East of Tours. 



«82 CHARLES VIIL [Chap. XXIV 

he lived. While he was speaking these words, he was sud- 
denly seized with a sort of apoplexy, and fell down without 
sense or motion. He was laid upon a pallet bed which hap- 
pened to be in the place, and expired in a ^w hours. He 
was in the twenty-eighth year of his age, and had reigned 
fifteen years. He married Anne of Bretagne, by whom he 
had three children, who all died in their infancy. 

Charles had a very indifferent figure, and, with the excep- 
tion of his eyes, which were sharp and brilliant, liis face was 
exceedingly plain. His speech also was defective, and he 
spoke slowly and with ditficulty ; but the kindness of his 
manner and the sprightliness of his humor made these, as 
well as the more serious faults of his character, to be over- 
looked ; and never was any man more beloved. It is even 
said, that two of his attendants were so much overwhelmed 
with grief at his death, that when they saw his body com- 
mitted to the grave they dropped down dead. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XXIV. 

Richard. I think the conquest of Naples, by Charles 
was one of the most extraordinary things you have yet told 
us. What a set of poltroons those Italian princes must have 
been to let him march with a mere handful of men from one 
end of Italy to the other, and back again, without making 
any attempt to stop him, till just at the very last I 

IS/Lrs,. MarkhaTTb. Philip de Comines, in his account of 
the expedition, declares, that " the whole expedition was a 
mystery conducted by God himself" 

George. I am very glad we have not yet lost sight of our 
old friend Comines. 

Mrs. M: Poor Comines experienced a variety of fortune&. 
In the minority of Charles VIII., he fell under the displeas- 
ure of the lady of Beaujeu, who kept him prisoner during 
three years, the greater part of which time lie was shut up 
in an iron cage. 

Mary. What had he done to offend her ? 

Mo'S. M. He had entered into a secret correspondence 
with the duke of Orleans, who was then an exile in Bretagne. 
The king, when he took the reins of government into his own 
hands, restored Ccmines to favor, and employed him on sev- 
eral important occasions. He was present at the battle of 
Fomova, and has given a full account of it. 

Gcorg". Perhaps he has told rs how it was that 90 OQ 



C^mv.] CHARLES VIII. 283 

French could make their way through an army of 40,000 
ttaHans, and with scarcely any loss. 

Mrs. M. Several causes combined to favor the escape of 
the French. The valley Was only a mile and a half v/ide, 
and the enerr^y's troops w ere hemmed in, and hampered by 
their own numbers. Their thirst of plunder was also another 
cause of their overthrow ; for instead of opposing the ad- 
vanced troops of the French, the Italians were more intent 
m falling on the baggage in the rear, which they completely 
pillaged. Charles, on this occasion, not only lost all his Italian 
<poi], but also the holy relics which he had carried from 
France, and which, it seemed, always accompanied the royal 
presence. But what was at that moment the most serious 
matter of all, was the loss of his provisions, a loss by which 
his army was reduced to the greatest .distress. And, although 
Ae gained his passage through the valley of Fornova, he 
found the hardest part of his labor yet to come, and had a 
most terrible march to Asti, which Comines describes in very 
ieeling terms. 

Mary. Will you, if you please, tell us what he says ? 

Mrs. M. The whole would be too long ; I will, however, 
lead to you one passage, which will give you some idea of 
the not unfrequent tjufferings of a retreating army. " Om 
/narches were long, and our drink nothing but standing water 
that was putrid ; and yet our men were so greedy, they ran 
themselves up to the waist to come at it. The king always 
jnarched before day, but never took a guide with him, nor 
baited till it was noon, and then he dined ; and those that 
attended hira took what care they could of themselves. No 
man in the whole army, though of the best quality, was ex- 
cused from looking to his own horse, but every one brought 
iiis own hay or straw in his arms ; twice I did it myself, and 
v/as two days without eating any thing but bread, and that 
none of the best. It was the most painful and incommodious 
march I ever made, thoiigh I have been in several bad enough 
■with Charles duke of Burgundy. We marched no faster 
than our artillery, and were forced often to halt on purpose to 
mend them, which, besides the deficiency of horses to draw 
them, incommoded us extremely. We were in no want of 
good officers, and men of experience, i-i the army ; but (aa 
fortune would have it) they had no authoiity with the king, 
who was young and untractable ; so that, to conclude, cm 
Saviour Jesus Christ did most manifestly reserve the glorv 
pf thpt expedition to himself" 



-^'84 CHARLES VIII. [Chap. XXIY 

IZichard. There is one thing in the history of our old 
friend Comines, which I don't quite hke ; and that was, his 
leaving his old master Charles to enter into the service of 
Louis XI. 

Mrs. M, There is a story told of Comines, which, if it b* 
true, accounts for his quitting the court of Burgundy. The 
Btory is, that Comines, presuming on the freedoms which the 
duke permitted him to take, one day desired him to pull ofl 
his boots for him. . 

Gemge. And what did the duke do ? 

Mrs. M. He did as he was desired, and then gave Comines 
such a hearty drubbing with the boots, that the discomfited 
courtier could never more appear in his presence. 

Mary. Do you know, mamma, what were the amuse- 
ments in which this king Charles VIII. spent so much of hia 
time ? 

Mrs. M. He was passionately fond of dancing, of tourna- 
ments, and of theatrical exhibitions. 

George. I can not think how he could like those tedious 
mysteries and moralities. 

Mrs. M. Mysteries and moralities were, at this time, su- 
perseded by a more lively kind of theatrical amusement, moro 
suited to the natural character of the French. Several of the 
gay young men of Paris formed themselves into compaides for 
the performance of short lively pieces, the object of which was 
to turn into ridicule their acquaintance, or sometimes the pub- 
lic characters of the day. One of these companies was com 
posed of young lawyers. Another, which was formed from 
among the principal citizens of Paris, was under the manage- 
ment of a chief who bore the distinguished title of the prince 
of fools. The performances of these gentlemen actors were 
exceedingly captivating to the Parisians, who flocked in 
crowds to witness them. 

Mary. Were these entertaining plays exhibited in 
churches ? 

Mrs. M. No ; they were exhibited in halls, which served 
as theaters — not such theaters as ours ; for there was no di- 
vision between the stage and the part appropriated to the 
audience ; and the actors, when they were not wanted on the 
Etage, sat among the audience. 

Ricliard. Were the French people as fond of disguisement^ 
as the English were ? 

Mrs. M. They seem to have been fond of every kind of 
amusement, and to have had a greater variety of diversions 



CuN-v.; CHARLfiS VIIl. 285 

iliaii the English. The lower orders oi the French, and par 
ticularly the Parisians, were very fond of processions. One 
of their favorite festivals was the procession of the Giant, 
which was annually celebrated on the 3d of July. An enor- 
mous figure of a giant, twenty feet high, with a poniard in 
liis hand, was paraded about the streets, - and finally burnt 
with fireworkS; and other great signs of rejoicing. 

Geai'ge. Had this giant ever wanted to blow up the pai 
liament, that they treated him as we do Guy Faux ? 

Mrs. M. Thfc story is, that this giant is meant to repre- 
sent a certain soldier (I can not tell )'ou his name) who, in a 
fit of desperation at losing his money at play, rushed into the 
street, and struck his poniard into an image of the Virgin, 
which stood at the corner of the street.* Blood instantly 
gushed from the wounded image. The people who saw the 
miracle seized on the soldier, and binding him on a gallows, 
stabbed him to death ; and in commemoration of this event, 
instituted the procession of " the Giant." This is the account 
given by popular tradition. The learned say that the festival 
is nothing more than a relic of paganism, which has descended 
to the French from the Homan colonists in Gaul. There 
was another favorite ceremony, which was derived from the 
same source, and that was the procession of the Fat Ox ;\ in 
which a bull was adorned with branches and flowers, as were 
the bulls of old, when led to sacrifice. A child, decked out in 
ribbons, was placed upon his back, and he was led about the 
streets, preceded by instruments of music. 

BAdmrd. This custom is not yet left off'. Don't you re- 
member there is an account of it in one of those entertaining 
stories in Highways and Byways ? 

Mrs. M. There was another annual festival which hap- 
pily no longer exists, and which was much more reprehensible 
than either the Giant or the Bosuf gras. This festival was 
called the Feast of the Ass. A young woman, with a child 
ui her arms, was seated on an ass, and was led in a proces- 
sion, with the bishop and clergy at its head, to the church or 
cathedral. There mass was said by the priests ; but instead 
.of the usual responses, the people answered by loud cries of 
"Hinhal hinha I" in imitation of the braying of an ass. 
This was meant for a representation of the flight into Egypt. 

Hidiard. How shockingly disgusting and profane I 

Mrs. M. This feast of the Ass was at one time adopted in 
England, but was never, I believe, permitted after the eleventh 
* La run an s Ours. t Bojufgrea 



88fi 



LOUIS XII 



[Chap. XXV 



century, when, the bishop of Lincohi forbade its celebration in 
his cathedral. In France it was not left off till the end of the 
sixteenth century. 

George. I am very glad to find the English were better 
than the French, even so long ago. 

Mrs. M. I should be very glad if it was the ambition of 
everjr Englishman to — 

George. Ah I mamma, I am almost certain I know what 
you were going to say. 

Mrs. M. Well, what was I going to say ? 

George. That it ought to be our ambition to try to surpasa 
the French in the excellence of our moral and religious con- 
duct and principles, still more than by superior courage and 
warlike skill. 

Mrs. M. You have guessed right, my dear boy ; and ' 
hope you will always bear this sentiment in mind. 



CHArTER XXV. 

IiOUIS XII., SURNAMED THE TATHER OF THE PEOPLE 

[Years after Christ 1498-1515.] 




Louis XII. at Table. 



' The early life of Louis XII. was attended with many soi 
rows and mortifications. The death of his father, while h« 
was still a youth, threw him under the immediate control of 
Louis XI., who looked on him with a suspiciou-s eye, on afv 



A.U. 1498.] LOUIS XII. ^87 

count of his near rjlationship to the throne, and always kept 
him near his own person, in a state of subjection which must 
have been very galling to a young and. lively prince. Aftex- 
ward his disputes with the lady of Beaujeu diove him into 
exile and caused his imprisonment. During the latter years 
of the reign of Charles VIII. he fell under that king's dis- 
pleasure, and found himself treated with coldness and dis- 
trust. 

These vexations and trials of temper had certainly a bene 
ficial effect on his character. •• No Idng of France was ever 
more solicitous to promote the happiness of his people, or more 
enthusiastically beloved by them in return. But while we 
applaud this amiable disposition, we must not be blind to his 
failings, though these were less, we may hope, of the heart 
than of the understanding. His foreign pohcy in particular 
.seems to have been most injudicious. France suffered ex- 
tremely from the ruinous wars which he engaged in, and 
which he commenced without foresight, and conducted with- 
out vigor. We may see but too often that even those princes 
who by nature are exceedisigly kind and compassionate, prove 
quite unable to appreciate justly the folly and misery of un- 
necessary war. 

Louis XII. had been obliged at an early age to marry Joan, 
the youngest daughter of Louis XI., a marriage eveiy way re- 
pugnant, to his inclinations; for Joan, though amiable and 
gentle-tempered, was unfortunate in her person and unprepos- 
sessing in her manners. On becoming his own master, he 
immediately sued for a divorce, and to that end courted the 
friendship of pope Alexander VI., and bestowed the dukedom 
of Valentinois on Ceesar Borgia, the pope's natural son. Me- 
zerai says, in speaking on this subject, that " Louis's alliance 
with Alexander and his son, who were monsters of wicked- 
ness, drew on him the hatred of all Italy, and perhaps the 
malediction of God. For it is impossible to stand well in thff 
eyes of God if one is in friendship with wicked men." Pooi 
Joan defended herself by every means in her power. But hei 
eflbrts were in vain. The king procured his divorce, and Joan 
shortly after retired into a convent. 

Anne of Bretagne had, on the death of Charles, returned tt 
her duchy, where she affected to exercise an independent sov- 
ereignty. But she was soon restored to the throne of France. 
Lovus, to prevent the important fief of Bretagne from falhng 
into the hands of an adversary, had no sooner obtained his 
divorce, trom J oan than he soUcited the hand of the widowed 



888 LOUIS XII. [Chap. XX r 

ytieen. She accepted his suit, and their marriage was cei& 
brated January 18, 1499. 

Louis's first care, in entering on the concerns of his govern- 
ment, was to lessen the taxes, and to improve the administra 
tion of justice. It is related that he was at this time impor- 
tuil^d by his courtiers to remove from the command of the 
army a brave old general of the name De la TrimouiUe, who 
had taken him prisoner at the battle of St. Aubin. Louis 
magnanimously replied, " That it did not become the king cf 
France to revenge the quarrels of the duke of Orleans." — It 
would have been happy if, when he forgave the quarrels of 
the duke of Orleans, he cbuld also have forgot his claims to 
the duchy of Milan. He would thus have avoided rriany 
difficulties, and been spared many mortifications. 

At first, indeed, no difficulties presented themselves. In 
July, 1499, he sent an army into Italy, which made an easy 
conquest of the Milanese, and of Genoa. On hearing of this 
success, the king himself crossed the Alps, and entering Milan 
in his ducal robes, spent three weeks there in regulating affairs. 
Sforza had fled on the first alarm of invasion, but he re- 
appeared as soon as Louis had returned to France, and retook 
the city as speedily as he had lost it. Louis then sent fresh 
forces into Italy, under the command of the brave La Tri- 
mouiUe, who soon regained possession of Milan, and took 
Sforza prisoner. On account of his crimes, the king would 
not extend toward him his wonted clemency, but kept him a 
close prisoner during the remainder of his life in the castle of 
Loches. 

From the conquest of Milan, Louis turned his arms to that 
of Naples ; but not conceiving himself sufficiently powerful to 
accomplish without assistance so great an enterprise, he formed 
an alliance with the crafty Ferdinand of Aragon, who lent 
his aid on condition of sharing the spoil. Frederic, king of 
Naples, seeing himself unequal to contend with the united 
force of France and of Spain, abandoned his kingdom, and 
leaving Iris children to the mercy of Ferdinand, trusted him- 
Relf to the generosity of Louis, who gave him a pension, and 
conferred on him the duchy of Anjou. Louis and Ferdinand 
being now masters of Naples, proceeded to make a division 
of the territory. But, as might have been expected, neithei 
party was contented, each desiring something more than his 
share. Thus their alliance soon turned into eimiity, and 
a:tual hostilities commenced on both sides. 

i ha'/e new to remind you that Mary of Burgundy, whose 



A.D. 1504. J LOUIS XII. 28» 

history I gave you in the reign of Louis XI., left one son and 
a daughter. The son, the arcliduke Philip, was, I then told 
you, educated by the Flemings as their future sovereign. He 
married Joanna, the eldest surviving child of Ferdinand and 
Isabella of Spain. Philip, to reconcile Louis and his father- 
in-lav,', had an interview with the French king at Lyons, and 
tiiere agreed with him for a cessation of arms. The French 
abided in. good faith by the agreement thus made ; but the 
Spanish general, who knew that his master would be well 
pleased with any act of treachery by which he might gain an 
advantage, took an opportunity of attacking the French army 
in Naples, which he defeated in two battles. These battles 
were fought on two successive Fridays, a circumstance which 
Henault teUs us is the origin of the vulgar superstition, that 
F7'iday is an unlucky day. In consequence of these defeats, 
the whole kingdom of Naples, with the exception of the town 
of Gaeta, fell into the hands of the Spaniards. 

When the archduke heard . of these events, he was ex- 
tremely shocked, and returned instantly to France, and put 
himself in Louis's power, assuring him that he had himself 
no participation in the acts of perfidy which had been com- 
mitted. Louis very honorably dismissed the archduke, but 
determined to avenge himself on Ferdinand. Accordingly, 
he equipped three powerful aimies. Two he sent into Spain. 
The third, under the command of La Trimouille, was des- 
tined to attempt the recovery of Naples ; but that brave com- 
mander fell dangerously ill, and so this hope was defeated. 
The invasion of Spain proved also unsuccessful. Louis was 
so much aflected by these disasters that an alarming illness 
ensued, and his life was for a time despaired of. He, however, 
recovered, and a truce was agreed to with Ferdinand. 

The death of pope Alexander, who died under very singu- 
lar circumstances in 1503, caused a great change in the 
affairs of Italy. He was succeeded by Pius III., who lived 
only three weeks. Cardinal Rovera was then chosen pope, 
and took the name of Julius II. He was a great patron of 
tne arts. He commenced the building of the church of St. 
Peter, at Home, and was the friend and patron of Michael 
Angelo, and of Raphael. Julius was one of the most bolf^ 
and aspiring pontiffs that ever sat upon the papal throne, and 
the ruling passion of his mind, next to ambition and the love 
of power, appears to have been hatred to the court of France. 

In the year 1504 died Isabella of Castile, the wife of Fei- 
dujand of Aragon, and the patroness of Columbus. She was & 

N 



af90 LUUIS XII fCHAP. xxr 

worn All of a. noMe and generous nature, a ad her name is ven- 
erated in Spain to this day. Isabella had one son and thre« 
daughters. The son had married Margaret t f Burgundy, and 
died without children. The eldest daughter had married the 
king of Portugal, and died leaving one son, who did not long 
survive his mother. These afflictions weighed down Isabella's 
spirits and hastened her death. The two surviving children 
were the archduchess Joanna, and Catherine, the vdfe of our 
Henry VIII. On Isabella's death, the archduke Philip took 
possession of Castile in his wife's name. He died in 1507. 
and the extreme grief of Joanna, whose understanding was 
naturally very defective, totally incapacitated her from takinpr 
any part in the government. Her eldest son Charles, after- 
ward the emperor Charles V., was acknowledged as sovereigo 
of Castile, but without the title of king, which the Castihan? 
would not confer on him wliile his mother lived. Ferdinand 
hov/ever, contrived still to retain the chief power, and gov- 
erned CastUe in the name of his grandson, who was at this 
time only seven years old. Charles was educated in the Neth- 
erlands, under the superintendence of his great-grandmother 
Margaret of York, and his aunt, Margaret of Burgundy, who 
had married the duke of Savoy, and was a second time a 
widow. A few months after the death of Isabella, Ferdinana 
married Germana de Foix, a young and beautiful princess, 
and niece to Louis, who gave as part of her dower all his right 
and title to the kingdom of Naples, stipulating however, that 
those Neapolitans who had suffered from their attachment to 
the cause of France should be set at liberty and have their 
property restored. 

In 1508, Louis most unwisely entered into the league of 
Cambray. Tliis was a league formed by the pope, the em- 
peror Maximilian, and the king of Aragon, all of them pro- 
fessed enemies of Louis, against the republic of Venice, Louis's 
only sure friend and ally on that side of the Alps. Louis in 
person gained a great victory over the Venetians in the battle 
of Aignadel, May 14, 1509, and the republic was stripped of 
a considerable portion of its territory^ but afterward in part 
recovered its losses. 

The councils of Louis had liitherto been governed by the 
cardinal d'Amboise, who had been his attached friend and 
servant during the adversities of his early years, and his miiv 
ister and adviser since his elevation to the throne. D'Am- 
boise was not a man of great abihties ; but his high integrity 
'•"TTimanded general respect, and raised him above all the 



AD. 1512.] LOUIS Xll. a»/ 

cabals and latrigues by which the affairs of Europe were at 
that time distracted. His death was universally bewailed, 
not only by the friends, but also by the adversaries of France, 
Julius alone, who stood in awe of his integrity, rejoiced at his 
death. Julius and Louis came at. last to open war, and the 
former was reduced almost to extremity, when the queen, who 
deemed it sacrilege to carry on hostilities against the church, 
prevailed with Louis to forbid his general to advance. On 
this forbearance Julius rallied, and resumed the offensive. 
He was again repulsed, and Louis gave orders not to spare 
him. Julius then allied himself with Ferdinand and the 
Venetians ; but their united forces were defeated on the 11th 
of April, 1512, in a great battle at Ravenna. 

In 1512, Ferdinand of Aragon made the acquisition of 
Navarre. He had long looked covetously at this little king- 
dom, and now quietly took possession of it. On the first ap- 
proach of the Spanish troops on his frontier, John d'Albret, 
who was no hero, abandoned his territories on the Spanish 
side of the Pyrenees,and fled to Beam, a small district on the 
French side, which constituted henceforth all the inheritance 
of the kings of Navarre. His wife, Catherine Foix, who was 
the last descendant of Charles d'Evreux and Jane of France, 
and who had been the heiress of Navarre, would often re- 
proach him for his pusillanimity ; and would say, " If I had 
been John d'Albret, and you Catherine Foix, we should not 
have lost our kingdom." 

Julius II. died in 1513, and was succeeded by the cardinal 
de Medicis, who took the name of Leo X. Pie, too, though 
with less animosity than his predecessor, adopted a policy ad- 
verse to France. 

In the same year a new enemy rose up against Louis in 
Henry VIII. of England, who, young and inconsiderate, was 
eager to display his spirit and activity in a war with France. 
He had no very good pretenses of his own for breaking the 
peace which subsisted between the two nations ; he therefore 
took up a quarrel of the emperor Maximilian ; and the two 
sovereigns, joining their forces together, laid siege to Teroiienne, 
in Picardy. An action was fought near Guinegate, in which 
the French were defeated. The duke de Longueville, and the 
celebrated chevalier Bayard, were taken prisoners. This ac- 
tion, which on the part of the French was more a flight than 
a battle, has been called the battle of the Spurs. Teroiienne 
soon afterward capitulated, and Maximilian and Henry, not' 
being able to decide Avho should keep it, settled the dispute by 



itd'4, LOUIS XII. [Chap. XXV 

burniiig it to the ground. Tournay* was neat besieged, and 
fearing the same fate, surrendered to Henry, who placed an 
EngHsh garrison in the town. 

Louis was now become weary of the unsuccessful warfare 
in which, during fifteen years, he had been perseveringly en- 
gaged. On every side he was defeated and disappointed 
AH his conquests in Italy had vanished from his grasp. Max- 
imilian, the son of Sforza, had recovered Milan, where the 
French, during their occupancy, had made themselves extreme- 
ly unpopular. Genoa revolted, and Naples was completely 
under the dominion of Ferdinand 

But though the arms of Louis were thus unfortunate abroad, 
his people were well governed and happy at home. Though 
an indifferent warrior, and a miscalculating poUtician, he was 
just and benignant in his conduct toward his subjects, and ac 
quired the title of " The Father of his People." 

Anne of Bretagne died in January, 1514. The king, 
although he sometimes reproved her for interfering too much 
in matters of state, loved her vdth sincere affection, and was 
a most afflicted mourner for her death. In the course of a 
few months, however, he made peace with the king of En- 
gland, and soon after married Mary, the young and beautiful 
sister of that monarch. Mary, whose affections had been pre- 
engaged to the duke of Suffolk, was brought to France a re- 
luctant sacrifice to state policy. To please his young bride, 
Louis gave up his regular hours, and quiet habit of life : he 
relinquished his former custom of dining at eight o'clock in 
the morning, and retiring to rest at six in the evening. He 
adopted, instead, the fashionably late dinner hour at twelve at 
noon, and would sit up at dances and gay assembhes till mid- 
night. These altered habits disagreed with his health, which 
had long been in a declining state, and he died January 1, 1515. 

By his second wife, Anne of Bretagne, he had two daugh- 
ters : — (1.) Claude, married her cousin, the count d'Angou- 
leme. (2.) Benee, married Hercules d'Este, duke of Ferrara. 

Mary of England had no children. 

The king having left no son, his cousin Francis, count 
d'Angouleme, was the nearest male heir to the crown. Bre- 
tagne was the inheritance of Claude, the king's eldest daugh- 
ter; whom her father was very desirous of marrying to the 
count d'Angouleme. Anne of Bretagne opposed this marriage 
with all her power. It did not, therefore, take place till aftei 
her death. 

' In B^Vium 



OuNT.] LOUIS XII. 2/1 

CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XX7. 

Manj. Why did the queen, ohject to her daughter 'si ma? 
riage with the count d' Angouleme ? 

Mrs. Markham. She had two reasons : one, that she 
wished the duchy of Bretagne to recover the dignity of an 
independent state, instead of sinking into insignificance as 
merely a part of the French monarchy. 

George. That was a very fooUsh reason. I hope the other 
was a better. 

Mrs. M. I think it was. It arose from her disapproba- 
tion of the conduct of Louisa of Savoy, the count's mother, a 
woman of gi-eat beauty and talents, and of a most extraordi 
nary fascination of manners, but of great vices. The event 
proved the justice of Anne's apprehensions : for Louisa be- 
haved very cruelly to poor Claude, and caused her to lead a 
miserable life. Anne herself was a woman of singular pro- 
priety of manners, and of simple habits ; and her court was 
remarkable for its decorum. She was always surrounded by 
a numerous train of young ladies of quality, whom she em- 
ployed in embroidering, and in other works suitable to their 
sex and station. She herself would sit at her work in the 
midst of them. She had a high, and, on some occasions, 
rather a vindictive spirit, and interfered, as I have said, some- 
what too much in the affairs of government. But she was,, 
on the whole, an excellent woman, and stands pre-eminent 
among the queens of France. Her heart is preserved in the 
royal library at Paris, inclosed in a case of gold filagree. 

Richard. I must say there was a strange set of monarchs 
at that time ; our king Henry VIII., those two popes, Alex- 
ander and Julius, the emperor Maximilian, and the deceitful 
old Ferdinand of Aragon. It was lucky there were one or 
two good queens to make up for the kings. 

Mrs. M. Maximilian was the strangest character of thera 
all. W^hile the rest were in general governed by one ruling 
passion, which led them on in a steady track of wickedness, 
he was drawn different ways by ambition and avarice, con- 
tending passions, of which, w hile each led him wrong, each at 
' the same time counteracted the other. Hence his whole life 
was a life of unfinished projects, and of the most absurd and 
glaring contradictions. One of his strange schemes was to 
raake himself pope. 

Mary. It must have been only a joke, mamma , he could 
ttot be in earnest. 



«94 



\ouis :5cii. 



LChap. XXV 



Mrs. M. He seemud very much in earnest in a Jetter on 
this subject to his daughter Margaret. This letter was writ- 
ten a short time before the death of pope JuHus II., and in it 
he expresses a great anxiety to bo appointed coadjutor to the 
pope, to the end that after his death he may be assured of the 
papacy. He concludes his letter thus : "I shall become a 
priest and be canonized ; so that after my death you will be 
obliged to pay me adoration, at which I shall be much glo- 
rified. I pray you keep this matter very secret, or else in a 
few days it will be known to all the world. 

" From the hand of your good father, Maxmiiliau, the fu 
ture pope." 




The Emperor Maximilian. 

Richard. He would have made a very droll pope. By- 
the-by, mamma, what was there so remarkable in the death 
of pope Alexander ? 

M7-S. M. The story is, that he and his son, Caesar Borgia, 
nveted the riches of a wealthy cardinal, and determined to 
poison him. To this end they invited themselves to sup with 
him at his country house, and, to do him the more honor, 
they brought with them a present of some choice wine : in 
this wine they had mixed poison. When they arrived at the 
villa, the heat of the weather had made them very thirsty, 
and they immediately asked for some wine. The pope's 
attendants being out of the way at the moment, the cardinal's 
servants brought the poisoned wine by mistake. Alexander 
drank heartily of it, and was soon seized with 'convulsions 
which in a few hours terminated his life. Caesar, who was a 
stronger man, and bad drunk more sparingly, escaped with 
the loss of health and strenjrth 



Ji^w J LOUIS XII. 25'j 

Mary. I always like, mamina, to see the devices of bad 
ifhjople turned in this way against themselves. 

George. Pray, mamma, how did Louis and the lady oi" 
iieaujeu behave to one another when he was king ? 

Mis. M. Their quarrels were reconciled during the reign 
of Charles VIII., and they lived afterward on very good 
terms with each other. Anne, by the death of the duke de 
Bourbon (the lord of Beaujeu's elder brother), became duch- 
ess of Bourbon. She never took any part in public affairs 
after Charles's death, but devoted herself to the education of 
Susanna, her only daughter, who was the richest heiress in 
France. 

George. I am glad, mamma, we have still some gallant 
knights in our history, now that we have left dear old Frois- 
sart so long behind. You said something to us in this reign 
of the chevalier Bayard. 

Mrs. M. And in the next reign you shall hear more of 
him. But I may now mention to you the famous Gaston de 
Foix. 

Geo^-ge. Pray do, mamma. Who was he, and what can 
you tell us of him ? 

Mrs. M. He was duke de Nemours, and the favorite 
nephew of Louis. His fine qualities have been always cele- 
brated in France, and he is the hero of many popular songs. 
He was killed at the battle of Pvavenna, at the early age of 
twenty-three. He charged the enemy, calling out to his sol- 
diers, " He that loves me, follow me I" and fell in the mo- 
ment of victory, pierced by twenty-two wounds. There were 
many other brave knights, Gaston's friends and cotemporaries, 
who greatly signalized themselves by their personal exploits. 
But I must leave this topic, that I may say something on the 
subject of architecture, particularly of church arctiitecture, 
which underwent a great change in this reign. The earliest 
Btyle of the French church architecture was rude and simple, 
as I believe I observed to you in the former part of our his- 
tory. This was called the Lombard style. 

Richard. Then I suppose the old Lombarci churches m 
France were heavy, clumsy buildings, like the old Saxon ones 
in England. 

Mrs. M. Still there was a marked difference between the 
Lombard and Saxon styles of architecture. In the Saxon 
the pillars were short and thick, and far apart, so that the 
fUi'ches which sprang from one to the other were low, and had 
% Avide span. In the Lombard style the pillars were thick, 



6 LODIS XII. LChap. XXV. 

but lofty and near together, so that the arches were neces- 
sarily very narrow. Under the reigns of Hugh Capet and hia 
son Robert, the pointed arch was first introduced, and gave 
rise to what was called the mixed Lombard. Other altera- 
tions and improvements arose, till at last, during the course 
of the thirteenth century, the elegance of the Gothic archi- 
tecture reached its highest perfection. 

The cathedrals of Amiens and Rheims were built during 
that period, and also, as perhaps you may remember I have 
before told you, the church of Notre Dame at Paris ; but this 
glory of the Gothic architecture was of short duration. The 
wars with the English, and the other distractions which fol- 
lowed, put a stop to all great and public works in France, 
during the greater part of the fourteenth and fifteenth centu- 
ries. Under the paternal government of Louis XII., several 
new and considerable buildings were erected. The frequent 
intercourse the French then had with Italy led them to in- 
troduce a mixture of the Italian (or Grecian, as we call it) 
with the Gothic — a mixture which is still greatly admired 
by the French, but which to most English eyes, is very incon 
gruous, and deprives each style of much of its beauty. 

Mary. Have the French any buildings like those of ours 
which were built in the reigns of Henry VIII. and queen 
Elizabeth, and which I have heard you call the Tudor style ? 

Mrs. M. No, my dear. The Tudor style is nowhere to 
be met with in France, and I believe may be considered as 
exclusively English. 

Richard. Do you know, mamma, what is the oldest 
building now existing in France ? I don't mean Roman 
buildings : they, of course, must be the oldest of all. 

Mrs. M. I beheve that the church of St. Genevieve at 
Paris is considered as the most ancient French building. It 
has been repaired and added to at different times ; but thei"e 
is a part still left which was built in the time of Clovis. 
One of the most curious monuments of architectural antiquity 
existing in France is the remnant of a bridge across the 
Rhone between Avignon and Villeneuve. This bridge was 
erected in the thirteenth century. The fragment left of it is 
still much admired as a work of art, and it was regarded at 
the time when it was built as something so wonderful, that 
ths architect was supposed to have been miraculously assist- 
ed, and was canonized after his death by the name of St. 
Benedict or Benezet. The building a bridge was in thosa 
days regarded as an act of charity to the rublic. and of pietj 



A.D. 151;? i 



FRANCIS I. 



297 



to God ; and a company of religious freemasons was formed, 
calling themselves the Bridge Fraternity,* who employed 
themselves in building bridges from motives of piety. 

Geoi-ge. And a very good work it was. I wiU try in fu- 
ture, whenever I pass over a bridge, to recollect how much 
obliged we are to the people who built it. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

FRANCIS I. 
[Years after Christ, 1515— 1547. j 




Chancellor Du Prat and his Wifk. 

When Louis XII. was on his death-bed, he sent for the 
young count d'Angoul^me, and holding out his arms to em- 
brace him, said, " I am dying : I recommend our subjects to 
you." 

Francis, count d'Angouleme, was grandson of John, the 
second son of Louis, duke of Orleans, and of Valentina of 
Milan. He M^as in the twenty-first year of his age ; his 
person was finely formed, his face was handsome, and hia 
wliole air and demeanor chivalrous and princely. He waa 
brave, generous, and gay. His temper was so franli and 
open, that he was incapable of disguise or of reserve Bui 
* Le Confratemite des Fonts. 



998 . FRANCIS I. [Chap. XXVI 

with all these dazzling qiialities Francis had many faults 
His very virtues led to them, for they engendered in him such 
a high opinion of himself as laid him open to the arts of flat- 
tery, lie w^anted judgment and steadiness, and at the same 
time that he was presumptuous and headstrong, was apt to be 
deceived and governed by others. No faults, were, however, 
seen in him at first. His gay and open character won all 
hearts. The young nobility, whom the frugality and more 
reserved deportment of Louis XII. had kept at a distance, 
crowded round Francis, and his court was the center of all 
that was brilliant, noble, and gallant. 

Francis, hke the late king, seemed to set an undue value 
on his claims in Italy. To obtain possession of Milan was 
the first and the last object of his reign. It was the main- 
spring of almost all his actions, and he many times risked his 
kingdom for it. 

As he made no secret of his determination to repossess him- 
self of that duchy, the emperor, the Swiss cantons, and Fer- 
dinand of Aragon, who, although on the verge of the grave, 
was as much alive as ever to worldly politics, entered into a 
confederacy with Sforza against him. To this confederacy 
the pope afterward acceded. Francis, all eagerness to begm 
the war, dispatched an army into Italy, which, crossing the 
Alps with incredible rapidity, surprised Prosper Colonna, the 
pope's general, at a small town in Piedmont, and took him 
prisoner, an exploit which was chiefly accomplished by the 
bravery of the chevalier Bayard. 

Francis no sooner received the news of this success than he 
hastened to join his troops, which had now advanced within 
sight of Milan. He left liis mother regent of France during 
his absence. The confederates, discouraged by the capture 
of Colonna, were desirous to treat for a peace ; but scarcely 
were the negotiations begun, when they were broken by the 
arrival of a body of Swiss reinforcements, who, eager for 
plunder, demanded to be instantly led to battle. The state 
of discipline was then so remiss, that the commanders were 
obliged to comply. About four o'clock in the afternoon of 
October 13, 1515, the Swiss rushed impetuously upon the 
French quarters at Marignano, about eight miles from Milan. 
The French, on the first alarm, put themselves m battle array, 
and thu king, dehghted to find himself thus actively engaged, 
placed himself, with a body of his troops, in the thickest par: 
of the fight. The enemy had broke their way into the camp, 
but could make no progress, being opposed man to man b) 



AD 1519.J bRANClS 1. 299 

the French, till night was far advanced, when, from darkness 
and weariness, both parties were constrained to desist from 
the contest. They did not, however, separate, but friends 
and foes, mingling together, lay down to snatch a short re- 
pose. The king lay down on a gun-carriage, and refreshed 
himself with a draught of water, sullied with dirt and blood, 
which a soldier brought in his morion. He did not sleep 
long, but employed the greater part of the night in preparing 
to renew the battle on the following day. When the day 
broke, and the Swiss returned to the charge, they found the 
French well prepared to receive them. At about nine in the 
morning, the Swiss seeing a body of Venetians advancing to 
the assistance of the French, retreated in good order, but 
with the loss of ten thousand slain. The veteran Trivul 
zio, a Milanese in the French service, who had been in 
eighteen pitched battles, declared that they were all children's 
play in comparison with this, which he called " the battle of 
the giants." 

This victory gave Francis for a time the desired possession 
of Milan. Maximihan Sforza did not make any further at 
tempt at resistance. Francis allowed him a pension as a com- 
pensation for his duchy, and he retired into France, where he 
died. The king returned triumphantly to Lyons, so much 
elated with his success that he now thought himself invincible 

In the following year Ferdinand of Aragon died. He re 
tained his fraudulent and crafty character to the Ig-st. He has 
not, however, been without his panegyrists, one of whom says, 
" There is nothing to blame in this king, but his inobservance 
of keeping his word." Ferdinand's daughter Joanna was still 
alive, but on account of her unhappy malady, was incapable 
of assuming the government, which was consequently conferred 
jn her eldest son Charles, one of the first acts of whose gov- 
3rnment was to make peace with France. The pope and the 
Swiss, cantons had ceased hostilities the year before. 

In 151 9 the emperor Maximilian, Charles's paternal grand- 
father, died. Charles and Francis became candidates for the 
imperial dignity, and carried on the contest with all outward 
appearance of amity. Francis said on this occasion to 
Charles, " We are as two suitors to the same mistress ; the 
more fortimate will gain her, but the other must remain con- 
tented." Francis, however, was very far from being content- 
ed, when Charles was elected emperor. He could not conceal 
fiis disappointment, and it laid the foundation of a personal 
hatred to Charles, which ended only with his life. Charles 



aoo FRANCIS I [CuAf XXVI 

had a younger brother Ferdinand, who had thi name and 
dignity of king of the Romans, and who, by rrxarrying the 
heiress of Hungary and Bohemia, afterward became king of 
those countries. He was a man of meek temper and inferior 
abihties, and interfered but httle in the pohtics of Europe. 

Charles and Francis were each anxious to acquire the 
friendship of the king of England. To that end Francis pro- 
pos^'d a meeting with Henry, which took place in June, 1520, 
near Ardres.* From the extraordinary magnificence dis- 
played on this occasion by these two young and vainglorioua 
monarchs, this meeting has been called " the field of the cloth 
of gold." Henry and Francis first met each other on horse- 
back. After a ceremonious salutation, they dismounted, and 
entered a splendid pavilion, and began with great gravity to 
debate on the affairs for which they were ostensibly met. 
But soon, growing weary of these discussions, they left all se- 
rious matters to their ministers, and spent the remainder of 
the ten or twelve days this interview lasted in diversions, and, 
I might add, boyish sports. At the end of that time, a treaty 
of aUiance having been completed, the two kings received the 
sacrament together, as a farther and solemn tie of their friend- 
ship. 

It was now the emperor's turn to try his skill in winning 
the vacillating favor of Henry. He had previously paid him 
the comphment of landing in England, on his way from Spain 
to the Low Countries. They now met at Gravelines,t and 
Charles, by flattering Henry, and caressing his favorite Wolsey, 
gained almost all he wanted at but little cost. Not indeed 
that he could prevail with Henry to break with Francis. 
All he could obtain (but this answered his purpose nearly as 
well) was a promise from Henry that he would hold himself 
neuter, and, if called on act as umpire between him and his 
lival. 

Both Francis and Charles were impatient to commence 
hostiUties, and they orJy paused because each was in hope 
that the other would begin first. It is difficult to say which 
monarch was the assailant, but open war was at length 
declared, in spite of the remonstrances of Henry, who, in hig 
office of umpire, affected a great anxiety to preserve peace. 

Never was there a king who had braver soldiers, more un« 
skilful generals, and more corrupt ministers than Francis 
And never was there a king more bold in his attempts, ot 
more negligent of all the means by which those attempts could 

* Nfiar Calais. t A. Vu^L 12cthe!»^ ^f Calais 



A.D. 1520. FRANCIS I. 301 

be made successful. He confided the exejution of liis military 
operations principally to Lautrec and Bonivet, men who in 
rash bravery and presumption resembled himself, while he 
sUghted the advice of the constable de Bourbon, the only gen- 
eral in France who appears to have been endowed with supe- 
rior military talent. The civil government was not in bettei 
hands than the military. From habit, complaisance, or else 
reluctance to business, the king sufiered his mother, Louisa of 
Savoy, to usurp the control of affairs. She had wit, beauty, 
and talents, but was totally without principle. She disposed 
of all the offices of the state at her pleasure, and bestowed 
them only on creatures of her ovvti, and on those who would 
flatter her vanity or her vices. With such a government at 
home, and with such commanders abroad, it will not seem 
surprising that the war in Italy, though rendered prosperous 
at first by the bravery of the French soldiers, was in the end 
a series of defeats and disasters. Lautrec, who commanded, 
had the mortification of seeing his troops desert for want of 
pay ; and before the end of the year 1521, the French were 
deprived of the Milanese, and of every conquest they had 
made in Italy, with the exception of the castle of Milan, and 
of a few inconsiderable forts, which the valor and perseveranct 
of the several governors, enabled them to retain for a wliile. 
Leo X., who had dreaded lest the French should get a per 
manent footing in Italy, was so much dehghted to hear of 
their reverses, that he died, as is said, from the effects of ex- 
cessive joy. He was succeeded by Adrian VI., a good and 
honest man, but too rigid and sincere to suit either the man- 
ners or the politics of the Italians. Adrian lived about a year 
in great unpopularity, and was succeeded in 1523 by the car- 
dinal Juho de Medicis, who took the name of Clement VII. 

When Lautrec returned to France, the king bitterly re- 
proached him for his misconduct in losing the Milanese. 
Lautrec threw the whole blame of his ill success on Sem- 
blancai, the director of the finance, who had failed to send 
him the stipulated supplies for the payment of his troops 
Semblancai exculpated himself by asserting, that the money 
had been ^aid into the hands of the king's mother, and offered 
to produce the acquittances she had given for it. But Louisa, 
who, instead of sending the money to Lautrec, had applied il 
to her own use, contrived by some of her agents to steal the 
acquittances from Semblancai ; and this man, venerable from 
his years, and respected for his unimpeachable character, wa» 
put to death in order to screen her crime. 



302 FRANCIS I. LChap XXVI 

Francis, in defiance of every difficulty, still madly persisted 
m his determination to regain the Milanese ; and that money 
might not be wanting, many till then miheard-of methoda 
were resorted to, to obtain it. But when all was ready, and 
the impatient monarch panted to lead his army to what he 
beUeved would be certain victory, an unlooked-for impediment 
fettered all his measures, and detained him in France. This 
was the defection of the constable de Bourbon, who, driven to 
desperation by the neglects of the kmg, and the malice of 
Louisaj forgot in the violence of his resentment his duty to his 
country, and abandoned the service of France to enter into 
that of the emperor, by whom he was received with open 
arms. 

Francis, on the discovery of Bourbon's treason, was uncei 
tain how far the mischief might have spread, and had tho 
Drudence, though prudence was not a common virtue with 
him, not to quit his kingdom till all danger of intestine com- 
motions had subsided. He nevertheless did not abandon his 
design on the Milanese, and sent there an army under tho 
command of Bonivet. Bonivet had to contend with Lannoy 
and Pescara, two of Charles's best generals. He was drive.v 
from all his posts, and being severely wounded while retreat 
ing before the enemy, he consigned the command of the army 
to the chevalier Bayard, who, being always the foremost in 
advance and the last in retreat, was mortally wounded in a 
skirmish near Romagnano, to the great grief of the whole 
French army, and, I might add, of the whole nation. In the 
mean time, Charles and the constable, in concert with Hem-y 
VIII., entered into a secret treaty to divide France among 
them, in like manner as it was once proposed to divide En- 
gland between Harry Hotspur, Mortimer, ,and Glendour. 
Bourbon's share was to be Provence, and all that had an- 
ciently belonged to the kings of Aries, from whom he claimed 
to be descended ; Henry was to content hmiself with the 
duchy of Guienne ; and Charles was to have all the rest. 
But France was to be won before it could be divided, and 
Bourbon was appointed, jointly with Pescara, to make an in- 
vagion, in the hope that the French, who were beginning to 
be greatly dissatisfied with the bad administration of the 
afi^airs of government, would flock to him. Not a single 
Frenchman, however, joined his standard, and Bourbon waa 
Boon obhged to retreat with some confusion into Italy. Fran- 
cis, flushed with the success of having driven out the invading 
irmy, resolved to pursue it across the Alps ; and showing 



A.D 15250 fKANGIS I. vB^ 

great displeasure toward all who dissuaded him, he set off fox 
Italy, leaving his mother regent, as before. 

The terror of the French arms cleared his way. He enter- 
ed Milan at one gate as Bourbon and Pescara escaped at an- 
other. Francis, instead of pursumg the flying enemy, follow 
ed the ill advice of Bonivet, and laid siege to Pavia ; and be- 
lievmg that, like Ceesar, he had only to come, to see, and to 
conquer, he dispatched a part of his army to take possession 
of Naples, and weakened it still more, by sending another 
body of troops to Savona. 

Pavia was well garrisoned, and the garrison was command- 
ed by Antonio de Leyva, a Spanish general of great skill. At 
the end of two months Francis was surprised to find that the 
siege was not the least advanced. It would, indeed, have 
been more surprising if it had ; for such was the improvidence 
of the king, and the mismanagement of his officers, that the 
assaults were often stopped for want of ammunition, and al- 
ways impeded by want of good order. In the beginning cf 
the year 1525, Bourbon, with Lannoy, the viceroy of Naples, 
advanced toward Pavia with a numerous army. On hearing 
of their approach, Francis was strongly importuned to raise 
the siege, and withdraw for a time till he could reinforce his 
dismembered army. But he had written a letter to his mis- 
tress, saying that he would never move from the walls of Pavia 
till he had taken it. He staid to keep his word, and staked 
his life and his kingdom. 

The French army was encamped in the park of Pavia, and 
the ImperiaUsts were now advanced so near that there were 
not a hundred paces between their outposts. On the night of 
February 23, the enemy made an attack on the king's posi- 
tion, which, however was well defended, and the assailants 
were forced to retire. Francis, delighted to see the action be- 
gin, and elated by this first success, believed the battle hali 
won almost before it commenced, and sallied out of his camp, 
Ihinkmg to complete the victory. The Spaniards at first 
gave way before the impetuosity of his charge, but the ap- 
pearance of Bourbon and Lannoy in the field soon turned the 
scale. Leyva also sallied from the town, and fell on the 
rear of the French. The duke of Alencon, who was first 
prince of the blood, and had married the king's only sister, 
was seized with so great a panic, that he fled from the field, 
and never stopped till he reached Lyons, where he died of 
fatigue, regret, and shame. 

Francis, who was conspicuous by the Fplend/jr of his armor. 



a04 FRANCIS I. [Ckap XXVI 

contipued in Ihe thictest part of the combat, and fought no 
longer for victory, but for life. His horse was killed under 
him, and he himself received several w^ounds. Two Span- 
iards, not knowing who he was, put their swords to his throat. 
At that instant one of Bourbon's French attendants came up 
and recognized the king, although his face was covered with 
blood from a wound in his forehead. This man protected 
him from the Spaniards, and besought him to surrender to the 
constable. But this the proud heart of Francis could not 
stoop to. He demanded to see Lannoy, and surrendered him- 
self to him, but not before the Spanish soldiers had stripped 
him, and despoiled him of his belt and coat of mail. The cap- 
tive king only conditioned that he might not be carried inta 
Pavia, and made a gazing-stock to the populace. He wa& 
accordingly conducted into a tent, where his wounds were 
dressed. At supper the constable de Bourbon made his ap- 
pearance, that he might attend on the king. The Spanish 
writers say that Francis received him very graciously, but the 
French assure us that he turned from him with indignation, 
and would not accept of his services. 

In this battle ten thousand of the French were slain ; 
among them the veteran La Trimouille and Bonivet. Boni- 
vet had formerly sought the constable's ruin, in the hope of 
succeeding him in his office, and Boiirbon considered him as 
one of his greatest enemies. But when his doad body was 
found on the field of battle, the sight of it seemed to disarm 
Bourbon's resentment ; and, after looking at it for some time 
in mournful silence; he exclaimed, " Wretched man I thou 
hast been the cause of the ruin of France, as well as oi 
mine." 

Charles affected to receive the news of his rival's defeal 
with great moderation, but in his heart he was overjoyed at an 
event which put not only the king, but (to all appearance, at 
least) the kingdom of France in his power. He rejected the 
advice which his confessor, and others of his council, gave him, 
to act in a way worthy to be held in remembrance by the latest 
posterity, and to restore Francis unconditionally to freedom. 
He demanded, as the price of his liberation, that he should 
resign to him Burgundy, which he considered as having been 
aui ustly wrested from his ancestors ; and that he should both 
reinstate the constable of Bourbon in his rights, and confer on 
liira Provence and Dauphiny as an independent sovereignty. 

When these conditions, to which were added others not less 
unreasonable, were proposed to him, Francis rejected thern 



A.D. 1525.] FRANCIS I. 36* 

scornfully, and protested that he would submit to perpetiaa] 
imDrisonment rather than agree to them. He was at this 
time confined in a smail castle near Cremona,* under the rig 
orous custody of Don Ferdinand Alarcon. Lannoy was very 
desirous to convey him to Spain, but was afraid of his being 
rescued during the passage by sea, and had no means of pro- 
viding an adequate convoy. After some time, however, Fran 
CIS found his imprisonment so irksome, that he was easily per- 
suaded to solicit a personal interview with the emperor, in the 
hope that it might facilitate his regaining his freedom ; thus 
making that his own desire which it was so much the empe- 
ror's interest to obtain. The French, finding that it was 
their king's wish to repair to Spain, did not attempt to oppose 
it ; and he himself issued orders that the Spanish vessels ap- 
pointed to convey him should be permitted to pass unmolest- 
ed. He landed in Spain, but instead of being immediately 
admitted, as he had expected, into the emperor's presence, 
he was closely confined in prison, and only suffered to take the 
air occasionally on a mule, surrounded by a strong guard. 

His friends, meanwhile, were not unmindful of him. His 
mother made some atonement for her former bad government 
by her exertions on this occasion. The king of England, also, 
either from fear of the increasing power of Charles, or that he 
was really affected by the misfortunes of Francis, exerted 
himself zealously in his behalf. But Charles was unmoved 
by all these attempts, and Francis, sinking under the disap- 
pointment of protracted hope, fell into a fever which thieat- 
ened to put an end to his life. Charles then began to fear 
that his victim would slip from his grasp, and relaxed the se- 
verity with which he was treated. He suffered his sister 
Margaret to come and visit him, and also vouchsafed to go 
and see him himself Francis, who was in his bed, ill and 
languishing, reproached the emperor with having come to see 
him die. Charles replied with kind and conciliatmg ex- 
pressions ; and such is the power of hope, that from this tirde 
the king revived. 

He had been above a year in prison, when Charles, per- 
ceiving that he could gain nothing by longer delays, again 
offered him his liberty, nearly on the same terms as before. 
Francis, weary of confinement, accepted those terms, and 
agreed to send his two eldest sons to Spain as hostages, till 
the conditions agreed on should be fulfilled. He signed the 
treaty at Madrid, in March, 1526, and contracted by it la 
* In Italy. 



i^ tRANciis 1. L^H-ip- xxn 

marry Eleanor, the emperor's sister, to resign. Burgmidy to 
him, and to relinquish his pretensions to Naples and Milan. 
Eleanor, accordingly, he afterward married, but the other con- 
ditions he had no intention to perform. 

Francis, escorted by Lannoy, now set off for his own king- 
dom. When they reached the Bidassoa, which divides Fran&j 
from Spain, they saw on the opposite bank Lautrec, with the 
two young princes. They met in a bark which was moored 
ill the middle of the stream, and the father, giving his chil- 
dren one hasty embrace, saw them dehvered as prisoners to 
Lannoy. It must, I should think, have been a bitter pang to 
him thus to see his two poor children consigned to the same 
prison from which he himself had been- so anxious to escape. 
He did not, however, give himself time to reflect on it : for, 
mounting a horse the instant he landed on the French side, he 
waved his cap over his head, and exclaiming, " I am yet a 
king I" he galloped off, as if he was afraid of being pursued, 
and scarcely stopped till he arrived at Bayonne, where he 
found his mother and sister. He was soon called on by 
Charles to fulfill the conditions of the treaty which he had 
signed at Madrid. But he excused himself, alleging, that 
promises made in prison were not binding. 

Charles exclaimed vehemently against this breach of faith, 
and revenged himself upon the poor boys, his prisoners. They 
were often shut up m a dark room, and were not allowed to 
have any thing with which they could amuse themselves. A 
French gentleman, who obtained permission to see them, 
found them in a most forlorn condition, their persons and their 
education being quite neglected. 

The war was now renewed. The pope, and most of the 
Itahan powers, exasperated by the tyranny of Charles, and 
the cruelty and excesses of the Spanish troops, took the part 
of Francis. Henry VIII. also espoused his cause. Bourbon 
commanded the imperial forces in the Milanese, and finding 
iiis soldiers becoming mutinous for want of pay, he resolved 
to march to Rome, and pacify their discontents by giving 
them the plunder of that noble city. At the approach of this 
disorderly and ravenous multitude, Clement, with several of 
the cardinals, shut himself up in the castle of St. Angelo, 
and left the citizens to defend theixiselves as well as they 
could. 

The imperial army came in sight of Rome in the even- 
ing of May 5, 1527. The assault commenced early the next 
morning, and as Bourbon was :n the act of placing a scaling 



\. X ir.29.] FRANCIS 1. 3OT 

ladticr against the walls, he was killed by a random shot from 
the town. When he felt himself mortally wounded, he de- 
sired to be covered with a cloak, that the soldiers might not 
oe discouraged by seeing his condition. Philibert, prince oi 
Orange, took the command. The city was taken arid given 
up to plunder. The imperial army kept undisturbed posses- 
sion of it lor several months, during which time this " queen 
of cities" was a prey to every excess which the wickedness 
of man could devise or perpetrate. But this wickedness 
brought ere long its own punishment. A pestilence broke out 
in the city, and the soldiers, refusing to leave their prey, fell 
in crowds by the disease. Of the numerous hosts which had 
cuarched to the sack of Rome, scarcely five hundred survived 
to leave it, when it was evacuated about ten months after the 
capture, on the approach of Lautreo, who, after reducing the 
Milanese, advanced rapidly to the succor of the pope. Lau 
tree, having delivered Rome, proceeded to attack Naples ; 
but his death soon after, which was followed by the capitula- 
tion of Ins army, put a final end to the enterprises of Francis 
in Italy. 

In 1529 a peace was made, which was chiefly negotiated 
by Louisa of Savoy, and Margaret, the emperor's aunt. It 
was stipulated in this treaty, which was called the -treaty of 
Cambray, that the king's sons should be set at liberty on the 
payment of a ransom of twelve hundred thousand crowns. 
Money was their so scarce in France, that several months 
passed before the required sum could be procured. At last it 
was conveyed, packed in forty-eight chests, to the Bidassoa, 
and there given in exchange for the young princes, with pre- 
cisely the same formalities with which they had three years 
before been exchanged for their father. They were accom- 
panied by the emperor's sister, Eleanor, and were met at the 
abbey of Veries, in Gascony, by the king, who there celebrated 
his marriage with the Spanish princess. 

Francis had now an interval of peace, and availed himself 
of it to indulge his taste for the fine arts. He enlarged and 
beautified several of the royal palaces, and built others. He 
assembled about him the most learned men, and the most 
celebrated artists of his time, and acquired for himself the 
title of " the restorer of letters and of the arts." After a short 
repose, however, we find both him and the emperor again 
watching for an opportunity to renew the war. 

In 1536 Charles invaded Provence with an amiiy of 50,000 
men, and laid siege to Marseilles. He was repulsed by tha 



?08 FRANCIS I. [Chap. XXVI 

skill of Montmorenc:; a nobloman at that time in great favoi 
at court, and was forced to a hasty and most disastrous re- 
treat, in which he was exposed to great personal dangers, and 
was more than once a whole day without food . 

On the first alarm of this hostile invasion, James V., the 
young and chivalrous king of Scotland, came unsolicited to 
the assistance of his ancient ally with a body of J 0,000 men. 
Contrary winds prevented his arrival till the danger was over 
Francis could not, however, but be grateful for the kind in 
tention, and to express his sense of it, gave his daughter Mag 
delaine in marriage to the youthful monarch. She lived a 
very short time. On her death, James again became a suitor 
for another princess of France, and married Mary of Lorraine, 
daughter of the duke of Guise. She was the mother of the 
unfortunate Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland. 

Francis had three sons, Francis, Henry, and Charles. The 
eldest, a young man of great promise, died in 1536. Henry, 
now, by his brother's death, dauphin, was a prince of an act- 
ive and warlike temper. At an early age he had married 
Catherine de Medicis, niece of Clement VII., but he was 
chiefly governed by his mistress, Diana of Poitiers. She and 
the king's mistress, the duchess d'Estampes, were avowed 
enemies. • The duchess, seeing the king's health decHne, and 
knowing that she could expect no favor from his successor, 
determined to make a friend of the emperor, entered into a 
correspondence with him. and betrayed to him th^ secrets of 
the confiding Francis. 

In 1538 a truce for ten years was agreed on. Not long 
afterward, the emperor being desirous of going through France 
in his way from Spain to the Low Countries, applied to Fran- 
cis for his consent, and offered to give up the Milanese to him 
in return for this favor. Francis gladly accepted the offer, 
and Charles passed safely through France, and was treated 
during his journey with the courtesy due to a royal visiter. 
But when he was afterward called on to fulfill his promise, he 
refused, and in 1542 the war re-commenced. In this war 
the capricious Henry VIII. of England became also a party, 
and siding with the emperor, joined him in 1544 in an inva- 
sion of Champagne and Picardy. Had they continued to act 
in concert, inevitable ruin must have overtaken the Frepch 
monarchy ; but both Henry and the emperor were too anxious 
to secure their own particular interest to do what was best for 
their common cause. Instead of proceeding to Paris, where 
they would have found every thing in confusion, and. uo prep- 



A.D. 154'I J P'RANOIS 1. 30ft 

arationg made for resistance, Henry laid siege to Boulogne, 
and Chirles sat down before St. Dizier.* In the mean time, 
the dauphin, on whom the command of the army had de 
volved, in consequence of the king's being at that time disar 
bled by illness, had time to collect a considerable force, with 
which he kept the invading army in check. The emperor's 
troops began to be distressed for provisions ; but this difficulty 
was removed by the duchess d'Estampes, who gave him secret 
intelligence which both enabled him to take St. Dizier, and 
also to possess himself of the French magazines of provisions 
at Chateau Thierry! and Epernay.J 

But Charles, notwithstanding the treachery which thus 
wrought in his favor, found the dauphin's army so powerful, 
that he was glad to make peace. A treaty was accordingly 
concluded at Crepy. In this treaty the emperor promised to 
give in marriage either his niece or his daughter to the duke 
of Orleans, Francis's youngest son, with Milan or the Low 
Countries for her dower. The dauphin, who had long been 
jealous of his brother, whom he regarded as his father's favor- 
ite, was exceedingly displeased by the terms of this treaty, 
and complained that his interests and those of France had 
been sacrificed. His complaints were so uncontrolled, that on 
his brother's death, which was somewhat sudden, he was ac- 
cused of having poisoned him. But from this charge he may 
be entirely exculpated, if the story is true which is commonly 
told of that young prince's folly and presumption. It is said, 
that on arriving at a village in which symptoms of the plague 
had appeared, he persisted in taking up his lodging in a house 
said to be infected ; boasting that in the annals of the mon- 
archy there was no instance of a son of France having died 
of the plague. To show the more disregard of danger, he 
pulled out the bedding said to be tainted, and ran up and 
down covered with the feathers. He was almost immediately 
seized with the distemper, and died. Francis was inconsola- 
ble at his death, while Charles rejoiced at it, and declared 
that the young prince's death absolved him of his engagement 
to resign the Milanese. 

In the mean time, Henry VIII., who had taken Boulogne, 
kept fast hold of his conquest. Francis attempted to force 
him to resign it by making reprisals on England, and fitted 
cut a fleet for that purpose. When this fleet was on the 

* Southeast of Rheims, on the Marne. 

t A little distance east of Paris, on the Mame. 

t On the Marne, below St. Dizfer, and above Chateau Thiarrj. 



SIO FRANCIS I. [Chap. XX\I 

point of sailing, he determined to give the ladies of the court 
an entertainment on board ; but the cooks, in their prepara- 
tions for the banquet, set fire to the largest ship, which waa 
burned with seven others. This accident proved fatal to the 
entertainment, but did not prevent the expedition, which 
effected a landing in the Isle of Wight, but soon afterward 
found it necessary to return home. 

In June, 1546, Henry and Francis made peace. Francia 
bound himself to pay a hundred thousand crowns a year, for 
eight years, at the end of which time Henry promised to re* 
store Boulogne. But in the course of the very next year, 
both these monarchs were called to their great account. 
Henry died January 28, 1547 ; and Francis's death followed, 
March 31, of the same year. He had long been consumed 
by a slow fever, which afi^ected his temper, and made him 
irritable and restless. He fancied that change of place would 
bring relief to his disordered frame, and roved incessantly from 
one residence to another. He died at Rambouillet * in the 
fifty-third year of his age, and the thirty-second of his reign. 

This king's magnificence accompanied him to the last. He 
had the most splendid fmieral that had ever been seen in 
France, and the people were so absorbed in their admiration 
of it, that they forgot his faults, and pardoned his ambition 
and his immoralities. 

He was twice married ; first to Claude, of France, by whom 
he had three sons and two daughters : — 

(1.) Francis, died in 1536. (2.) Henry, who succeeded 
his father. (3.) Charles, duke of Orleans, who died in 1545. 
(4.) Magdelaine, married James V. of Scotland. (5.) Mar- 
gaiet, married Philibert, duke of Savoy. 

By his second wife, Eleanor of Austria, he had no children. 

The Spaniards continued to retain possession of Navarre, 
in spite of several attempts to drive them out ; but Hemy 
d'Albret, the son of John d'Albret and Catherine Foix, re- 
tained the title of king of Navarre. He married Margaret, 
sister of the king of France and widow of the duke d'Alencon, 
a princess celebrated for her wit and talents. They had only 
one child, Jane, who married Anthony, duke of Bourbon. 

In this reign Luther laid the foundation of the reformed 
or Protestant church. His doctrines found their way into 
France ; but the converts to them were in general treated 
with great severity, and many suffered martyrdom. The 
queen of Navarre was suspected of having imbibed the sent* 

* A short distance southwest of Parig. 



CONV. 



FRANCIS \. 



dll 



ments of tne reformed religion, and was obliged to conceal heJ 
opinions with great care. 

In this reign, Anthony du Prat, who had heen first Francis's 
tutor, and was afterward chancellor, introduced the practice 
of selling the offices of judicature — a practice which was not 
abolished till the revolution. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XXVI. 




Mad Margaret. 

Mary. That is a sad history, mamma, of the constable d<i 
Bourbon. Traitor as he was, I can not help pitying him : ho 
must have been so very unhappy. 

Mrs. Markham. His greatest unhappiness was in his own 
ungovemed temper, which was such as to procure for him the 
title of " the impatient." 

George. But then you said, you know, that he had great 
provocations. Will you tell us something of his early his- 
tory, if you please ? 

Mrs. M. His father was duke de Montpensier, younger 
brother to the duke de Bourbon, and the lord of Beaujeu. 
He married his cousin Susanna, who, as I have already told 
you, was the richest heiress in France. She died in 1522, 
and her husband succeeded to all her vast possessions, which 
had been settled on him at their marriage. The constable 
was at the time of his wife's death still young and handsome, 
and Louisa of Savoy, who was a great many years older, 
wished to marry him, and desired the king to propose the 
match to him, which was accordingly done. Bourbon, who 
was a man of strict and regular conduct, had an utter detesta- 
tion of Louisa's vices ; and being taken by surprise, expressed 
his dislike to her with so much freedom, that the king was 
provoked to strike him. From that moment Louisa's love 



312 FRANCIS I [Chap. XXVI. 

turned to the most deadly hate, and she determmed on his 
destruction. She put in a claim, in right of her mother, who 
was of the house of Bourbon, to all the Bourbon possessions, 
and, contrary to all law and equity, obtained a verdict in her 
favor. The constable was stripped of every thing which hia 
wife had bestowed on him ; and this it was which drove him 
to desperation, and made him a traitor. 

RicJiard. He did not get much by his treason. 

Mrs. M. If revenge was his object, he gained all ho 
wanted, and more than he could have presumed on ; but if 
ambition was his motive, he was, indeed, disappointed. His 
own countrymen abhorred him ; even the Spaniards shrank 
from him, and treated him with suspicion and reserve. The 
emperor did not keep his promises ; and instead of being a 
king and tke arbiter of kingdoms, he became little more than 
the head of a lawless army of banditti. 

Geo7-ge. As to king Francis I,, he heartily deserved every 
tiling he met with. For my part, I do not see what the 
French can find in him to be so mighty fond of. 

Mrs. M. Shakspeare says, " The evil that men do lives 
after them ; the good is oft interred with their bones." But 
the reverse of this is true in the case of Francis I. The evil 
that he did, his perpetual wars for the possession of a duke- 
dom, which a king of France might well have done without, 
his weakness in submitting to the control of his mistresses, his 
breach of faith, his disregard of morality, are all forgotten. 
On the other hand, his palaces, his establishments for learn- 
ing, and the monuments of the arts which he encouraged 
" live after him," and have handed down his name to later 
ages as that of a great and glorious king, " the father and re- 
storer of letters and of the arts." 

One of the mischiefs, as I can not help considering it, 
wliich Francis did to his country, was, that he changed the 
aspect of the court by introdncip.g so many ladies into it. 
Before his time, the nobles in attend ince on the king left 
their wives to look after their families at home. But in the 
reign of Francis, the ladies were invited to accompany their 
husbands to court. The kuig was not at all scrupulous as 
to their characters, and some of them were very abandoned 
women, and caballed and interfered in all affairs. The ex- 
ample thus set was followed in succeeding reigns. A\ one 
time there were as many as three hundred ladies in attend- 
ance on thft ccwt, and their quarrels and meddling caused 
infinite harm. 



yONV.] FRANCIS i. 31 

Richard. 1 think I have heard that ths leason why the 
French ladies have always meddled so much ia state affairs 
is to make themselves amends for the Salic law. 

Mary. For my part, I can not help thinking that there 
is no occasion for women to trouble themselves about manag- 
ing kingdoms. There are always men enough to do that 
Don't you think so, mamma ? 

Mrs. M. 1 agree with you, my dear, that women have 
nothing to do with the management of public affairs. V/c 
have duties enough of our own, without interfering with what 
is the province of the other sex. 

Richard. You said that there are many vestiges of 
Francis's magniilcence. Pray what are they ? 

Mrs. M. He built the palace of Fontainbleau, and also 
that of St. Germain en Laye. He pulled down the old pal- 
ace of the Louvre erected by Philip Augustus, of wliich I 
have shown you the drawing, and began to rebuild it on a 
much larger scale, and in quite a difierent style. But he only 
completed one range of the present edifice ; the rest has been 
added since at different periods. 

George. You yesterday gave us some account of the 
French churches. Will you be so good as now to tell us 
something about their houses ? 

Mrs. M. The dwellings of the Gauls, like those of the 
ancient Britons, were merely huts built of mud, and roofed 
with reeds. The Romans introduced stone and brick into 
their buildings ; but they do not seem, to have been imitated 
in this by the Franks, who constructed their houses of plankp 
of wood tied together, and filled up the interstices with clay. 
Even public buildings and the walls of their towns were long 
built in this manner. 

Richard. But I suppose that when it became the fashion 
to build castles, brick and stone came into use again. 

Mrs. M. Stone did, but not brick, which was almost 
totally disused in France from the time of the Romans till 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when it re-appeared, 
and was much employed as an ornament. 

Mary. As an ornament, mamma ! why I always thought 
a, brick one of the ugliest things in the world. 

Mrs. M. It was at one time the fashion in France to 
mix bricks with stone, in such a manner as to form patterns 
and compartments in the \\m11s of the liouses. Tiles for roofs 
were used as early as the thirteenth century, and these, in 
touses of distinction, were varnished and painted in checked 

O 



314 FRANCIS I. [Chai-. XXVI 

Slato also, which I heheve was unknown to the ancients, be« 
gan to be employed for roofs in the thirteenth century. 

Mary. Pray, mamma, do you know what the insides of 
the houses were Hke ? 

Mrs. M. There is very little known of the interior of 
French houses previous to the fourteenth century. At that 
time they were built with low doors and very narrow win- 
dows, and were seldom more than two stories high. The stair- 
cases v/ere on the outside of the houses, as is still often to be. 
seen in French cottages. In the houses of the gentry the 
staircases were in process of time put under cover, and . in- 
closed in little towers. 

Richard. I have often seen in pictures of old French and 
Dutch houses Httle towers sticking out at the comers of the 
houses. I dare say they were for the staircases. 

Mrs. M. Very probably. The interior of a house was 
commonly divided into one large room for the use of thfc 
family, and a few small chambers for the accommodation of 
strangers, which, when there were few inns, was a very neces- 
sary provision. 

Mary. There were, I suppose, bed-rooms for the family. 

Mrs. M. The large room, like the cobbler's stall in the 
song, served for parlor, for kitchen, and hall, and also for bed 
room. There the whole family, parents, children, and serv 
ants, lived together. This was called " the family room,"* 
and this primitive mode of life continued even among the 
higher classes for a very long period. 

George. It might be veiy primitive, but I am sure it 
could not be very comfortable. 

Mrs. M. The family room was not excluded from tl» 
royal palace. At least, mention is made in an old book ck 
good authority of the tubs of salted meat which stood in the 
king's chamber. At the period we are now arrived at, do- 
mestic architecture had undergone a very material change. 
The taste for Italian architecture, which had been introduced 
into churches, was in some measure extended also to the 
houses, the outsides of which were most elaborately charged 
with ornaments. There still exist some old houses of this 
period, the exterior of which is completely covered with me- 
dallions, festoons of flowers, groups of figures, and all kinds of 
fanciful decorations. 

Richard. What were these ornaments made of '? 

M.rs. M. Sometimes of carved wood, but more generally 

* Le chainbre menaarfere. 



CoNT.] FRANCIS I. rtl5 

of plaster. There is a very fine specimen of this sort of house 
at Rouen. It was built in the reign of Francis I., and is 
eupposed to have been inhabited by him during his occasional 
visits to that city. One of the characteristics of the French 
houses of this date is the enormous height of the roof, which 
to our eyes appears out of all proportion to the rest of the 
building ; but which, according to the then French taste, was 
supposed to give an air of dignity to the whole edifice. These 
roofs were not sufi^ered to escape the national love of decora- 
tion, and were loaded with a profusion of wooden or leadep 
ornaments. 

Richard. Are the French still fond of high roofs ? 

Mrs. M. The fashion continued during a long period ; but 
latterly, to judge by the drawings I have seen of French 
houses of the present day, the contrary extreme seems to havo 
been adopted. The roofs of most of the modern buildings, 
those at least that pretend to architectural beauty, are very 
low, or nearly flat. 

Richard. And now, mamma, will you give us, if you 
please, the history of the chevalier Bayard ? 

Mrs. M. To begin the story, then, according to the good 
old beginning. There was once upon a time, in Dauphiny, a 
brave and loyal gentleman, who had four sons. Perceiving 
himself near his end, he sent for them all, and asked them 
what manner of hfe they desired to pursue. The eldest re 
pUed, that, he should like to stay at home, and take care of 
his aged parents. Pierre, a boy of thirteen, and the hero of 
our story, chose the profession of arms. Of the two youngest, 
one declared it to be his wish to be an abbot, and the other 
said he would be a bishop. 

George. I must say, two very modest young gentlemen ' 

Mrs. M. And lucky ones too ; for it appears that in pro 
cess of time each attained his wish. As for young Pierre, he 
entered as a page into the service of the duke of Savoy. Tho 
life of Bayard is written by one who styles himself his " loyal 
servant." The account of his departure from his father's 
house is thus quaintly told. " His mother, poor lady, was in 
a tower of the castle weepmg bitterly ; but when she knew 
that her young son was on his horse, impatient to be gone, 
she descended to take leave of him, telling him, as much as a 
mother could a son, that she commanded him three things 
The first was, to love God above all things, and recommend 
himself night and morning to God, and serve him without of- 
fending him iff any way, if it might be possible. Th*} second 



816 FRANCIS I. [Chap. XXVi 

was, to be courteous to all men, casting away prde, neither 
to slander nor lie, nor be a tale-bearer, and to be temperate 
and loyal. The third was, that he should be charitable, and 
share with the poor whatever gifts God should bestow upon 
him. 

Richard. I am sure that was very good advice. I don't 
think that even you yourself, mamma, could have given better. 

Mrs. M. And I shall be satisfied if you follow my advice 
as well as young Bayard did his mother's. From boy to man, 
he was respected and beloved for his courtesy, loyalty, bravery, 
benevolence, and invincible integrity. He entered the service 
of Charles VIII., and was actively engaged in his Italian wars, 
as also in those of Louis XII. and of Francis I. He waa 
often appointed to posts of honor and danger, and always ac- 
quitted himself well. 

Mary. I suppose he was made a general at least. 

Mrs. M. He never rose above the raidi of a simple captain. 

George. What was that owing to ? 

Mrs. M. Perhaps to his inability to win the favor of the 
great by the usual arts of servility and flattery ; and perhaps, 
to his own moderation in not aspiring higher. But if he did 
not reach to the common and less noble rewards of wealth 
and raiok, he acquired a far more valuable prize, in the uni- 
versal love and respect of his fellow-creatures, and a title fai 
above that of lord or potentate, the title of the knight " with- 
out fear and without reproach." 

The account of Bayard's death is exceedingly touching. 
He had always expressed a great desire to die in battle. The 
French general, Bonivet, being wounded, as I related to you 
in the last chapter, was obhged to quit liis army, which was 
then retreating before the Spaniards, and appointed Bayard 
to take the command. Bayard was slaia in this retreat, and 
the loyal servant has thus described the manner of his death : 
" The good knight caused his troops to march, with as much 
composure as if he had been in his own house, and slowly 
retired, keeping his face ever toward the foe, and brandishing 
his sword ; but it so fell out by the sufferance of God, that a 
stone from a hacquebouze struck him across the back, and 
fractured his spine. As soon as he felt the blow he cried out, 
* O God !. I am slain.' He then took hold of his sword, and 
kissed the cruciform hilt thereof, and exclaiming, ' Have 
mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness.' * 
After that he waxed pale, as one swooning, and nearly felL 
• Miserere mei, Deus, secundum inagnam misericordiam t lam ! 



CoNV J FRANCIS I 3£r 

But he still had strength to grasp the saddle how, till a young 
gentleman who was his steward helped him to dismount, and 
placed him under a tree. His soldiers wished to carry him in 
their arms to some place of safety, but he could not bear the 
least motion, and desired to be left where he was, earnestly 
beseeching them to leave him, and secure their own safety ; 
but they would not abandon him." His biographer thus con- 
tinues : "How can I describe the profound sorrow that pre- 
vailed throughout the French camp I You would have 
thought of every one of them that he had lost a parent." 
The Spaniards now came up, and Pescara ordered " a fine 
pavilion for him, and laid him on a camp bed. Also a priest 
was brought him, to whom he devoutly confessed, saying these 
very words : ' My God, I am assured that thou hast declared 
thyself ever ready to receive into mercy and to forgive whoso 
shall return to thee with a sincere heart, however great a 
sinner he may have been. My Father and Saviour, I entreat 
thee to be pleased to pass over the faults by me committed, 
and show me thy abundant clemency, instead of thy rigorous 
justice I' At the conclusion of these words, the good knight 
without fear and without reproach rendered up iiis soul to 
God." A short time before Bayard expired, Bourbon ar- 
rived, and was affected to tears at seeing him in that sad con- 
dition. Bayard perceived it, and said to him, " Weep not for 
me ; I die in the service of my country : you have far more 
cause to lament your own victory than my defeat." 

The Spanish general paid every respect to the remains of 
his fallen enemy, and permitted his body to be carried to 
France for interment. It was treated every where as it passed 
with the honors usually paid to nobles and princes. 

Mary. Pray, mamma, where was he buried ? 

Mrs. M. At Grenoble, where a monument was erected 
over him by a private individual who admired his worth. 
But his noblest monument is the respect which posterity yet 
shows to his memory. 

George. How pleasant it is, amidst such a number of 
wicked, cruel, and rapacious people, to meet with a man who 
was so very good ! 

Mrs. M. Nothing shows more strongly than the history 
of Bayard the beaut/ and dignity of virtue. His charactei 
sheds a luster over a scene which in a moral sense is in gen- 
eral gloomy : and the reign of Francis I. is more truly enno- 
bled by the virtues of this one man than by all the king's 
fruitless victories. 



,31 i 



HENRY If. 



[Chap. XXVIJ 



George. I think that, for the future, instead of -wdshing 
that when I am a man I may be an admiral, or general, oi 
lord chancellor, I will be contented to wish myself hke the 
good knight without fear and without reproach. 



CHAPTEK, XXVII. 

HENRY II. 
[Years after Christ, 1547—1559. 1 




Henry II. 

Henry II. resembled his father in many parts of his chai 
jicter. Like him, he was brave, generous, and of a gay and 
lively temper : and, hke him, he loved show and profusion. 
But he liad not his father's superior talents, nor his imposing 
dignity of manner. He was good-natured to excess, was 
agreeable in conversation, had a great readiness in public 
speaking, and was one of the handsom.est and most graceful 
men of his time. But his want of firmness, and the facility 
with which he suffered himself to be governed by his favorites, 
made him, although he was an engaging companion, a veiy 
indijSerent king. He might have been still worse, if he had 
been governed by his queen, the universally detested Cath- 
erine de Medicis. But she seems never to have had any itt 



A-.D. 1547.1 HENRY II. 31 S 

fluence over liVn, and as yet appeared only in the back-ground'. 
Nothing is to be remarked of her during the reigns of Francis 
t. and of her husband, except the art with which she conceal- 
ed the violence of her passions, and the profound dissimulation 
in which she shrouded her talents. 

Among the prominent characters in the late liign was 
wlaude, duke of Guise. He was the second of the seven sons 
of the duke of Lorraine who vanquished Charles the Bold at 
the battle of Nancy. Claude had entered the service of 
France very young, and had risen into great favor with Fran- 
cis I., who created him duke of Guise. But Francis was at 
length aware of the duke's aspiring and ambitious temper (a 
temper which became hereditary in his family), and not long 
before his death enjoined his son " to beware of the ambition 
of the house of Lorraine." Another of his injunctions was, 
that the constable de Montmorenci, who had been sent into 
banishment, should not be recalled. But Francis was scarce- 
ly laid in his grave, before Montmorenci was sunamoned to 
court, and Francis, duke d'Aumale, Claude's eldest son, was 
loaded with favors. You will see, in the course of the events 
which follow, how pointedly the misfortunes which befell 
Henry and his children may be traced to the infringement of 
his father's dying commands. 

But although Montmorenci and Aumale partook of the 
king's favor, they had only a limited influence over him. 
Diana of Poitiers was the brilliant star of the court, and all 
other favorites bowed before her. Diana was the widow of the 
Sieur de la Breze, seneschal of Normandy. She was several- 
years older than the king, but by her wit and her brilliant 
beauty, which she retained to extreme old age, she so com- 
pletely captivated him, that he resigned himself and his king- 
dom almost entirely to her guidance. The people vented their 
discontent by accusing her of fascinating him by the use of 
magic arts. 

In 1549 the Idng and queen made a public entry into Paris, 
which was celebrated by tournaments and running at the ring^ 
and other en/jertainments. These were succeeded by the pub- 
lic execution of several heretics, who were burned alive in the 
presence of the whole court. This horrible spectacle affected 
the king extremely. His nerves never got the better of the 
shock they then received, and he was ever after subject to 
convulsive shudders, whenever the recollection of it crossed his 
mind. 

In 1552 another war commenced with the emperor. Id 



3'JO HENRY II. L^'HAP XXVA 

this year, also, Henry formed an alliance with tlie Protestant 
princes of Germany, who had leagued with each other to pro- 
tect their rights and liberties against the unjust usurpations 
of Charles. Henry, in person, marched into Lorraine, and 
possessing himself of the person of the duke, who was at tins 
time a child, sent him to France to be educated with his own 
sons. Proceeding onward, he seized on Metz,* Toul,t, and 
Verdun,^ three considerable towns which were then depen- 
denciss on the empire, but which have ever since been attach- 
ed to the French monarchy. He next entered Alsace,^ and 
hoped to obtain possession of Strasburg, but was compelled by 
various circumstances to retreat. The German states made 
a treaty for themselves at Passau, which secured their reli- 
gious liberties from future invasion. Henry was much dis- 
pleased at being thus deserted by his allies : but he was still 
prepared to carry on the war with alacrity. The emperor, 
on his part, though it was now late in the year, and the 
winter had set in with unusual rigor, was too impatient to 
attempt the recovery of Metz to think of waiting for a better 
season. 

The town was large and straggling, and the fortification!? 
weak, and, when Charles arrived before it with a numerous 
army, he made himself sure of soon regaining it. But ht 
found a stronger resistance than he had expected. D'Au 
male, now, by his father's death, duke of Guise, displayed a 
skill and intrepidity in its defense which raised his reputation 
to the highest pitch. He was no less distinguished, also, for 
■ his humanity than for his bravery ; and when at last Charles 
found himself obhged to raise the siege, and to withdraw his 
troops, treated the prisoners who fell into his hands with a 
benevolence which, at that time, was new in the bloody an- 
nals of war. 

The emperor's mother, Joanna, died in April, 1555, and in 
the autumn of that year her son put into execution the extra- 
ordinary act which he appears to have meditated for some 
time, namely, that of resigning his vast dominions, and retir- 
ing from the busy scenes of life. As he advanced in age, he 
had become more and more surfeited with the greatness which 
he had in his early life so much loved and sought It has 
been imagined that this disgust to the world proceeded from 
a degree of that unhappy malady which had clouded his motii* 

* Northwest of Strasburg, which is on the E,hine. 
t South of Metz. | West of Metz. 

$ In the eastern part of France, on the Rhino 



A.D. 1557. J HENRY 11 321 

sr's long and melancholy existence. To his only bon, Philip, 
he resigned Flanders, on the 25th of October, in this year : 
and the crown of Spain, on the 16th of January, 1556. In 
the October following, he also resigned the empire to hi a 
brother Ferdinand, whom he had before caused to be elected 
king of the Romans, and then retired into a monastery in' 
Spain, where he died in 1558. 

Philip II., soon after he was thus invested with his father's 
great possessions, became entangled in a dispute with pope 
Paul IV. Paul called on the king of France for assistance 
against Philip, and held out the lure of making the conquest 
of Naples. I do not know whether this bait tempted Henry 
himself; but, what was in effect the same thing, it was 
caught at by his powerful nobles, the duke of Guise, and his 
brother, the cardinal of Lorraine. Diana of Poitiers, now 
duchess of Valentinois, was also favorable to the attempt. 
The opposition of all the king's wisest and most prudent coun- 
selors availed nothing, and a gallant army was sent across the 
Alps, under the command of the duke of Guise, who departed 
full of hope and presumption. He experienced, however, 
nothing but reverses, and was only spared from further mor- 
tifications by a hasty recall to France, where his presence was 
required to avert still greater disasters. 

While Guise had been contemplating the conquest of Na- 
ples, the king of Spain had been meditating an invasion ol 
France. He prevailed on his queen, Mary of England, to as- 
sist him with some troops, and having mustered a large army, 
which he placed under the command of Emanuel Phihbert 
(now, by his father's death, duke of Savoy), he laid siege to 
St. Quentin. 

Coligny, admiral of France, nephew to the constable Mont- 
morenci, was governor of Picardy.* He threw himself into 
St. Quentinf vnth a small body of men, and defended the 
town so bravely, that he kept the whole Spanish army at bay. 
The constable hastened to the reUef of his nephew : but found 
the place closely invested. It was with the utmost difficulty 
that a small reinforcement, commanded by d'Andelot, Co- 
ligny's brother, could make its way into the town. Wheiv 
iki& object was efiected, Montmorenci would gladly hav" 
withdravni : but, as he was endeavoring to secure his retreat, 
he was attacked by the Spaniards with so much celerity, thai 
ha had not time to put his troops in order of batUe. Af»,ej 

* In the northern part of France. 

f Near the noithern boundary of Picardy. 



S2-i HENRY II. Chap. XXVH 

four hours' hard fighting, the French were totally defeated. 
Four thousand men were slain, six hundred of whom were 
gentlemen. All the artillery was taken except four pieces, 
and the constable, with many other noblemen, were made 
prisoners. This battle was fought August 10, 1557. Such 
a defeat had not been sustained on the French soil since the 
days of Cressy and Poitiers. The consternation throughout 
France was extreme. It was fully expected that the duke of 
Savoy would have marched directly to Paris ; and this, prob- 
ably, he would have done, if he could have, followed his own 
judgment. But Philip, ignorant in war, and no less obsti- 
nate than ignorant, commanded him to prosecute the siege of 
St. Quentin. Seventeen days after the battle, the town was 
taken ; but the time which it thus cost to overpower the 
bravery of Coligny and his resolute little band of warriors, 
enabled Henry to assume a posture of defense. On the other 
hand, Philip's German soldiers deserted for want of pay, and 
the English refused to serve any longer with the Spaniards. 
The return, also, of the duke of Guise from Italy greatly re- 
nved the spirits of the French. This gallant prince perform- 
ed, soon afterward, the brilliant exploit of recovering Calais 
out of the hands of the English, in whose possession it had 
been* during more than two centuries. Thus the ancient 
rivals of France were expelled from the last hold which they 
had retained on her territory. Calais was taken January 8, 
1558 ; and in the April following the ascendency of the duke 
of Guise was raised still higher, by the marriage of the dau- 
phin, to his niece Mary, the young queen of Scotland. 

In 1559 a peace was concluded at Chateau Cambresis, be- 
tween Henry and Philip. To cement this peace, two mar- 
riages were agreed on : the one between Philip and Elizabeth, 
Henry's eldest daughter ; the other between Margaret, the 
king's sister, and the duke of Savoy. Great preparations 
were made in France for the approaching celebration of these 
marriages. That of Philip and Elizabeth took place first, 
June 17, 1599, the duke of Alva attending as proxy for 
Philip. On this occasion was held a splendid tournament. 
Lists were erected, extending from the Tournelles to the Bas- 
tile. The king, who excelled in this kind of exercise, entered 
the lists, and broke S3veral lances with different lords of his 
court. The tournament continued during three days. On 
the last day, June 29th, the king desired to try his skill 
against the count de Montgomeri, one of the captains of the 
Scottish guard, and esteemed one of 'he most expert tiltera 



\.D. 1559.1 



HENRY II. 



321 



9f his time. Montgomeri was very unwilling to accept thft 
king's challenge, and excused himself as well as he could ; 
but Henry would take no denial. Montgomeri'^ lance broke 
against the king's helmet, but a splinter wounded him in thf» 
right eye a little below the eyebrow. He instantly fell back 
ward, and would have come to the ground if the dauphin 
had not caught him in his arms. He lay without speech or 
sense during eleven days, at the end of which time he ex- 
pired. It is impossible to describe the distraction and con- 
fusion which pervaded the court. There was a general 
struggl^fbr power among the contending parties of the court- 
iers. But at this juncture the queen came forward, as alone 
entitled to take the direction of affairs. Her first exercise 
of authority was to order the duchess of Valentinois to retire 
to her own house, and not to enter the chamber of the dying 
king. 

Henry II. died July 10, 1559, in the forty-first year of his 
age, and the thirteenth of his reign. 

He married Catherine, daughter of Lorenzo de Medicis, 
and had four sons and three daughters : 

(1.) Francis, who succeeded him. (2.) Charles, afterward 
king Charles IX. (3.) Henry, duke of Anjou, afterward king 
Henry III. (4.) Francis, due d'AlenQon, afterward duke of 
Anjou. (5.) Elizabeth, married Philip II. of Spain. (C.) 
Claude, married the duke of Lorraine. (7.) Margaret, mar- 
vied Henry Bourbon, king of Navarre. 

A few days only before the king's death, his sister's mar 
riage took place with the duke of Savoy. 




Tkk Tiltiho betwekn Henry II. and the Count bk MoNiaoHi 
From Montfaufon. 



324 HENRY II. [Chap. XXV l» 

CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XXVII. 

llicliard. I hope the count of Montgomeri was not pu» 
ished for causing the king's death. He did not seem to be at 
all to blame. 

3Jrs. Markham. No process against him was instituted ; 
but still he deemed it prudent to withdraw for a time to En- 
gland. The event proved that this precaution was very wise, 
for when he fell into Catherine's hands many years afterward 
she had him cruelly put to death in revenge for having caused 
the death of her husband. * 

George. He was very foolish to put himself in her way. 

Mrs. M. He would gladly have kept out of it if he 
could ; but the fortune of war threw him into her power. 
During the civil wars which arose afterward in France, be 
tween the Catholics and the Hugonots, Montgomeri left En- 
gland, and was a very active leader in the Hugonot army, till 
at last he was taken prisoner by the royal, or Catholic party. 

Mary. I am sorry we are going to have civil wars. .1 
always think civil wars the worst part of history, 

Mrs. M. Those of France will not reconcile you to them 
The wars between the Hugonots and the CathoUcs display 
more faithlessness and cruelty than any other civil wars on 
record. The speaking of the count de Montgomeri reminda 
me of an anecdote which I forgot to mention to you in our 
yesterday's conversation. 

George. Then pray let us have it to-day. 

Mrs. M. Twelfth night, which the French call " the 
celebration of the kings,"* is observed by them with great 
festivity. It happened that, one twelfth-night, Francis I., 
then young, and ibnd of boyish sports, was engaged with a 
party of the young lords of his court in the diversion of a 
mock siege. The missiles used on this occasion were snow- 
balls, with which they attacked the house they were besieging 
The party within also pelted the assailants vidth snow-balls 
At last one of them, the father of the count de Montgomeri. 
let fall, probably by accident, a lighted firebrand, which struck 
the king on the head, and severely wounded him. He was 
obliged in consequence to have his hair shaved off; and this 
accident introduced into France a fashion of wearing the hair 
short, a fashion which lasted nearly a century, when the curl- 
in.g locks of the young king Louis XIV. in troduced the fashion 
»f wearing it long. 

* La ftte des roi«. 



Co>T •] HENRY II %2i 

Richard. Pray, mamma, why were the French Protestants 
called Hugonots ? 

Wrs. M. The common opinion is, that they derived thia 
name from the Hugo gate at Tours, near which the early re- 
formers held their nocturnal astemhlies ; but Mezerai and 
others say, that the name comes from an old Swiss word, 
which signifies a league, or covenant. 

Hichard. Are there different sects among the Catholics 
as there are among the Protestants ? 

Mrs. M. They will not allow, I believe, that there are 
any different sects ; but there are, at all events, gi'eat diversi- 
ties of opinion. 

In the reign of Fraiicis I. there arose a new religious ordei 
— that of the Jesuits. The founder of this order was Igna- 
tius Loyola, a Spanish gentleman, who, having been severely 
wounded in an engagement between the French and Span- 
iards in Navarre, beguiled the tedious hours of his confine- 
ment with reading the Lives of the Saints. The study of 
this book gave a serious turn to his mind, and determined him 
to abandon the profession of arms, and to aim at the glory of 
founding a new order in the church. Loyola was a man of a 
very ardent character, and the rules of his order are framed 
with extraordinary art, and consummate knowledge of man- 
kind. He soon procured many followers, and prevailed with 
the pope, Paul III., to grant a bull confirming the new insti- 
tution. 

George. Then I suppose the next thing he did was tn 
build a monastery ? 

Mrs. M. The Jesuits had, properly speaking, no monas- 
teries. They had houses to dwell in, and. a great number 
of colleges, which were very excellent seminaries for youth 
The members of this order were not required to live in cells, 
or to occupy themselves with that routine of pious exercises 
which forms the chief business of those who are properly 
monks. The business of the Jesuits was to live in the 
world, and to disperse themselves in different places, that 
they might so spread the more extensively, both by precept 
and example, the knowledge and the love of religion. 

Gsorge. And surely that was the way to do more goG{] 
than by living shut up in a cell. 

Mrs. M. The Jesuits have, doubtless, in their time done 

much good, particularly in the continent of South America 

iff here they found a noble field for their pious endeavors ; and 

in those parts especially, where the cruelty and avarice f ♦ 



S26 .lENRY II. [Chap. XXVIT 

llie Spanish and Porti:;guese settlers had tended to brutalize 
the human character, the mild and benignant influence oi 
the Jesuits has shed a ray of humanity over the gloomy 
scene. But when they exchanged the desert for the court, 
they became different men. Their policy was very subtle and 
msinuating, and they were often at the bottom of state plots 
and intrigues. At length they incurred an almost universal 
distrust, which, as all opinions run naturally into extremes, 
was probably carried farther than it could be justified. 

Richard. Had they an abbot, or any person they called 
their head ? 

Mrs. M. Their head had the name of general. He had 
a very despotic authority, and appointed all the other officers, 
of whom some were called rectors, and others provincials ; 
but they were all under the absolute control of the general. 

Richard. If he was a bad man, and abused his power, 
had the others any remedy ? 

Mrs. M. They might appeal to the pope, who was con- 
sidered as their supreme head ; but no instance ever occurred, 
I believe, of such an appeal being made. They were careful 
to admit no members who were not possessed of considerable 
abilities, and likely to promote the interests of their order. 

George. How did they manage to have only clever m3n 
among them ? 

Mrs. M. The noviciates were very long and very strict. 
No person was admitted into the order tilL he was thirty- 
three years old. And so much was required of every candi- 
date by the rules, that only men of superior intellect and 
acquirements could aspire to belong to it. The Jesuits applied 
themselves particularly to the education of youth, and ac- 
quired an influence over the minds of their pupils which, in 
very many instances, continued through their lives. They 
aad no large estates, nor independent revenues. They coveted 
neither riches nor luxuries : all they aimed at was power and 
influence. And they understood their business so weU, that 
they at length made their way into the councils of every Cath- 
olic prince of Europe. The influence of the Jesuits increased 
to so great a degree, that the order was abolished in the year 
1773. It was again restored, a very few years ago. 

M'xry. I was just going to ask you, before we began talk- 
ing about the Jesuits, if the terrible accident that happened 
to the king did not put an en 1 to tournaments. 

Mrs. M. The kings of the Valois family were too passion# 
atelv attached to that Koecies of diversion to let any considop 



bi.N?.] HENRY II. 32» 

ition make them forego it. Tournaments were freqaejit in 
the re gn of Charles IX., who was severely wounded in the 
foot at a tournament. The last entertainment of the kind in 
France was during the reign of Henry IV., when a grandson 
of the duke of Guise wounded severely the inarechal Bassom 
pierre. 

Mary. The riding at the ring must have been much the 
most agreeable and the least dangerous of all those games. 

Mrs. M. The low and mean habits of the unhappy sons 
of Henry II. introduced a degraded taste into their court. 
The manly exercise of tilting was turned into a vulgar piece of 
buffoonery, by the duke de Nemours and the grand prior of Lor 
raine, who, at a tilting at the ring in the reign of Francis II., 
appeared in the dress of women. The duke was attired like 
a citizen's wife, with a silver chain and a large bunch of keys 
hanging from his girdle, such as were then worn by women 
of the middle class, the jingling of which as he rode " afforded 
great sport to the spectators." The prior was dressed like a 
gipsy woman, and carried in his arms an ape dressed in baby 
clothes, which afforded even more sport than the bunch of 
keys. 

RicJiard. I have hardly patience to hear of dukes and 
priors making such fools of themselves. 

Mrs. M. After the commencement of the civil wars, by 
which the minds of men were wrought up to a pitch of san- 
guinary fury, these childish sports and burlesque trials at arms 
gave way to contests of a very different sort. Single combats 
then became frequent, which usually ended fatally, it being 
customary for the combatants to fight in their shirts, to obvi- 
ate all suspicion of wearing concealed armor. 

George. I should think if that was the fashion now, it 
would soon put an end to duels. 

Richard. The more I think of the emperor Charles V. 
retiring from the world, the more extraordinary it seems. 

Mis. M. Charles in his latter years was a great sufferer 
from the gout. Exertion of every kind was often extremely 
painful to him, and he appears to have meditated on his re- 
tirement long before he put the design in execution. 

Mary. Where did he retire to ? 

Mrs. M. To the monastery of St. Justus, not far from 
Plasencia, in Estremadura. Several years before, in passing 
through the country, Charles had been charmed with its beau- 
tiful situation. The impression dwelt on his mind ever after 
and determined him to make this the place of his retreat Ha 



328 HENRY II. LChai>. XXV IK 

had no sooner gone through the ceremonials tf his abdication, 
which he made in the Low Countries, than he set sail foi 
Spain. He was accompanied by his two sistars, Mary, queen 
of Hungary, and Eleanor, widow of Francis I. Soon after 
he landed he dismissed all his train, except twelve gentlemen, 
whom alone he would suffer to follow him in his retreat 

Mary. I hope he let his sisters go with him. 

Mrs,. M. They anxiously desired to do so, but he would 
not permit it. They settled near him, however, and the 
grave soon united them. Charles died in 1558, and his sis- 
ters did not long survive him. 

George. Did the emperor live in a cell as the monks did ? 

Mrs. M. Previously to his arrival at the monastery, he 
had caused an addition to be made to it of six apartments for 
his accommodation. These apartments were built and furnish 
ed more in reference to the condition in which he now placed 
himself than to his former dignity. The two largest rooms 
were only twenty feet square : they were hung with brown 
cloth : on one side they communicated with the chapel, and 
'on the other with a small garden, which the emperor culti- 
vated with his own hands. The other four rooms were mere 
cells with bare walls. 

Richard. Did he ever seem to grow tired of his retire- 
ment ? 

Mrs. M. It does not appear that he ever did. The salu- 
brity of the air, for which the spot he had chosen was much 
celebrated, and the absence of carking care, procured him at 
first so great a remission of his disorder, as to amply reward 
him for the sacrifice of his greatness. He employed himself 
sometimes in his garden, and sometimes in making models of 
machines and in mechanical experiments. He would occa 
sionally ride out on a little palfrey. These were his amuse- 
ments ; but he at length totally discontinued them, and occu- 
pied his whole time in religious exercises. At last his health 
declined rapidly, and the nearer death approached, the more 
vividly would the sins of his former fife rise to his terrified 
remembrance. It seemed an alleviation to his wounded con- 
science to inflict upon himself severe corporal punishment, and 
after his death his whip of cords was found stained with his 
blood. A few days before he died, he went through a singu- 
lar act of penance. He performed the whole ceremony of big 
iuneral, except the interment. He laid himself in his cofiin, 
dressed in his shroud, and the service for the dead was per- 
formed over him, in which he himself joined^ with prayers and 



ONV.J HENRY II. 329 

tears, showing every sign of a deep repentance and a feivent 
devotion. 

RicJiard. It must have heen a very affecting solemnity tc 
the spectators. Yet still I can not help thinking that hb 
would have shoAvn a still hetter repentance, if, instead of shut- 
ting himself up in a monastery and practicing these austeri- 
ties, he had continued to reign, and had spent the end of his 
life in trying to promote his peojle's happiness, and making 
what amends he could for the sin^ of his early life. 

Mrs. M. If he had done so, it would have been much 
better for his people ; and more particularly as his son, Philip 
II , bad all his faults with fev/ of his redeeming virtues, and 
was by his bigotry and cruelty the scourge of Europe during 
the long period of forty years. 

George. I saw, in looking over one of your books, some 
account of Philip's building a palace to celebrate the battle 
of Saint Quentin. 

Mrs. M. That was the palace of the Escurial, which he 
built in perfo-Traance of one of the two vows which he made 
during the batfle. He then vowed to St. Lawrence (on 
whose day, August 10, the battle was fought), that he would, 
if he escaped, build a palace in honor of him. This palace, 
because of the tradition that that saint was broiled to death 
Gil a gridiron, was kid out in the form of a gridiron. It was 
a magnificent, but not a beautiful structure, and has lately 
been destroyed by an accidental fire. 

Mary. Pray, mam*»ka, what was Philip's other vow ? 

Mrs. M. His other vow. wh-'cb al-so h© religiously kept, 
was, that if he escaped v^tiv \^h iv*i cf \\k-< h\''\\o, he would 
uever be present at anotbt^r 



(CHAPTER XXVIII. 

FRANCIS ir. 
[Years after Christ, 1559—1560.1 




Claudb and Francis, Dukes of Guise. 

Jd"iiANCis was between sixteen and seventeen years old wJien 
the unexpected death of his father placed him on the throne. 
The kingdom was at that juncture in a very deplorable state. 
There had not as yet been time for the newly contracted 
peace to heal the disorders occasioned by the long war. The 
introduction of the reformed religion had excited a general 
ferment, and had caused breaches and divisions in all orders 
of society. The court was spht into factions. The two prin 
cipal factions, and these hated each other rancorously, were 
those of the duke of Guise, and of his great rival the constable 
Montmorenci. The king, from his youth, and his evident in- 
capacity, could afford no promise of any effectual support to 
the sinkmg fabric of the state. He and his three young 
brothers were at this time the sole remainmg male descendants 
of the house of Valois. 

The next princes of the blood were Anthony de Bourbon 
and his brothers, who traced their ronnection with the royal 
family as far back as St. Louis, their descent being from 
Robert de Clermont, that monarch's youngest son, who mar- 
ried the heiress of Bovrbon. Anthony himself was not a man 



k.D. 1.659.J FRANCIS II. 331 

who could act a prominent part. He was caby and good-na 
tured, of great personal bravery, but of no firmness or decision 
of character, and easily swayed by the merest trifle. He had 
married Jane d'Albret, the only child of Henry d'Albret and 
of Margaret of Valois, sister to Francis I. By that marriage 
he gained the title of king of Navarre, an almost barren dig- 
nity. His two brothers were, Charles, cardinal de Bourbon, a 
man of feeble capacity, and Louis, prince of Conde, who seemed 
to concentrate in his person all the ability of the family ; but 
he, having embraced the reformed religion, was entirely ex- 
cluded from all influence at court. 

The party of the duke of Guise was soon perceived to as- 
sume a decisive superiority over every other. That prince's 
near relationship to the young queen of France made Jiim 
formidable even to the queen-mother herself, who was jealous 
of his power, even when she professed to unite with him. The 
influence of Montmorenci was in the mean time gradually 
weakened by the divisions which sprung up in his family. 
His nephews, Coligni and d'Andelot, became Hugonots ; and 
he himself, in abhorrence of their heresy, at length united 
himself with the duke of Guise. The duke, who was by na 
ture humane and generous, was induced by the cardinal of 
Lorraine, his brother, whose bigotry was extreme, to persecute 
the Hugonots with furious zeal ; and great numbers of them 
suffered death for their religion. The burning chambers,* 
which had this horrid name given them because they inflicted 
on heretics the punishment of burning to death, were institute\i 
at this time in France. 

The people murmured at the authority usurped by the 
Guises. They even affected to consider them as foreigners, 
who had no right to interfere in the affairs of France ; and 
several plots, chiefly fomented by the Hugonots, were formed 
to displace them. The most considerable of these plots was 
called the conspiracy of Amboise, the object of which was to 
seize on the duke's person while he was with the royal family at 
Amboise, a town on the Loire. The plot being discovered and 
fmstrated, the parties concerned in it were punished with unex- 
ampled severity. Several were put to death, and their bodies 
fastened on iron hooks round the walls of the castle of Amboise ^ 
which the king and queen were at that time inhabiting. The 
:[ueen-mother herself, and the ladies of the court, had the bar 
barity to look out from the windows of the castle at some of 
^e crudest of these exacutions. The prince of Conde w^ 
Chambres ardentes. 



532 FRANCIS II L^has XiLVIll 

charged with being concerned in this plot, but vindicated 
himself with so much eloquence and apparent truth, that the 
duke and cardinal could find no plea for condemning him, and 
were obliged to suffer him to depart unmolested. 

He and his brother, the king of Navarre, retired mto Gui 
enne, and kept aloof from the court, but continued to keep up 
a secret correspondence with the Hugonots in difieieait parta 
of the kingdom. This correspondence being discovered, the 
duke of Guise in the king's name convened an assembly of the 
states-general at Orleans, to which the king of Navarre and 
the prince were summoned to answer for their conduct 
Their friends entreated them not to go, but they thought that, 
if they refused, it would appear Like an acknowledgment of 
guilt ; and they accordingly went to Orleans. Immediately 
on their arrival they went to the castle to pay their respects 
to the royal family. Guise, as if impatient to secure his prey, 
had them arrested at the instant of their departure from the 
king's presence. The prince of Conde was brought imme 
diately to trial, and was condemned to be beheaded. 

The only honest minister at that time in France was the 
chancellor I'Hopital. He, amidst the corruption of the times, 
had preserved his integrity wholly inviolate, and had on many 
occasions used his best endeavors to oppose the violent and 
pernicious counsels of the Guises. He had been successful in 
preventmg them from establishing the inquisition in France, 
and now exerted himself to save the prince of Conde. The 
count de Sancerre also refused to sign the warrant for his ex- 
ecution. This refusal, and the delays which the chancellor 
contrived to interpose, saved Conde 's life. For while hia 
existence was thus hanging by a thread, the unlooked-for 
death of the king made a sudden change in the aspect of af- 
fairs, and delivered him from the grasp of his enemies. The 
Guises saw their court influence annihilated, and knew that 
the queen mother would have a predominating ascendency 
during the minority of the next king, who was now a boy. 

The death of Francis was occasioned by an abscess in the 
head, which was not at first apprehended to be of any dan- 
gerous consequence ; but, after some days, the symptoms ap- 
peared to indicate his imminent and inevitable death. Nothing 
could now exceed the confusion and consternation of the court ; 
the courtiers hurrying backward and forward ; the duke and 
cardinal paying obsequious attention to the queen-mother, 
whom they had before slighted ; and Catherine, forgetting 
ihe sufferings of her dying son, and thinking only how best to 



A..D. 156'J.J 



FRANCIS II. 



33a 



secure her orp t authority. The Guises endeavored to prevaL 
with her to seize on the king of Navarre, who, though not 
absolutely a ppsoner, was detained at Orleans, and to put him 
and his brother Instantly to death. But I'Hopital was fortu- 
nately able to persuade her that they were her only counter- 
poise against the predominance of the house of Lorraine 
Catherine sent for the king of Navarre, and after assuring him 
that she had taken no part in the trial and intended execution 
of his brother, ofiered him her friendship on two conditions : 
the first, that he would forego the claim to the regency, which 
he possessed in quality of first prince of the blood ; and the 
second, that he would be reconciled to the Guises. Anthony 
complied readily with her first request, but was with difficulty 
prevailed on to agree to the second. 

Francis died, December 5, 1560, at the age of nearly 
eighteen years, having reigned one year and five months. His 
next brother, Charles, Avho was then in the eleventh year of 
his age, was declared his successor. 

Francis married Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland, but had 
no children. 

T have not before mentioned to you, that a council was 
summoned at Trent in the year 1545, for the regulation of 
the church and extirpation of heresy. This council, the de- 
crees of which are commonly considered as the authorized 
exposition of the Catholic doctrines, continued its sittings at 
different intervals till the year 1564, when it was dissolvo'i. 




G.iTE OF THE Town of Moret near FomtainbslbaO 



334 FKANCIS II. [Chap. XXVIU. 

CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XXVIII. 

'Richard. I shall be curious to seeliow this cunning queen 
Catherine got on in the next reign. 

Mrs. Markham. Catherine had great talents, hut she had 
no enlargement of mind. Her whole thoughts centered in 
self. To acquire power, and retain it, was the sole aim of all 
her actions. But eyen her views of her own interest were 
bounded vieM's ; she never looked beyontl the present moment, 
and forgot that there was a future, both as regarded this 
world and the next. Hence she was often entangled in her 
own nets. She looked upon deceit and dissimulation as wis- 
dom and policy. She never acted with sincerity, and her 
whole life was one continued tissue of artifices. 

Gecn-ge. I dare say she got no good by them ; for I know 
that when I try to be cunning, I never find it answer. 

Mis. M. The history of Catherine de Medicis presents, aa 
you will find in the sequel, a very striking example of the 
anxieties and embarrassments which insincerity causes. It 
may, however, be said in her excuse, that her early Hfe was 
passed amid difficulties and dangers, which must have too 
much famiharized her to the intrigues and vices of dishonest 
politicians. 

Mary. Will you tell us, if you please, something of hex 
early history ? 

Mrs. M. She was the daughter of Lorenzo, duke d'Urbino 
(a grandson of the great Lorenzo de Medicis), and was born 
at Florence during a scene of perpetual tumults between the 
friends and enemies of that powerful family. When Cathe- 
rine was about nine years old, all the Medicis were banished 
except herself. She was detained as a kind of hostage. At 
the end of two years, the city was besieged, and a factious 
chief proposed that she should be placed on the walls, and ex- 
posed to the fire of the besiegers. 

Mary. And was she ? 

Mrs. M. If she had been, it might have saved France 
many miseries. But the proposal was rejected with the ut- 
most horror. At the age of fourteen, she was married to 
Henry, who was then 'duke of Orleans, his brother, the dau- 
phin, being at that time alive. I have already given you 
some account of her farther history down to the death of 
Francis II. 

George. Was she the same queen Catherine de Medicis who 
had all the Protestants nrassacred on St. Bartholomew's day ! 



CoNv.] FEANOIS It 33 J 

Mrs. M She was. She had a feehng of personal hatred 
to every Protestant, independently of her zeal for the Catholic 
rehgion. She always attributed the death of the kirig, hei 
nusband, not so much to accident as to a precoiicerted plan of 
the Hugonots. For this suspicion there was not, I believe 
the least foundation ; but she was herself so unprincipled, ana 
6o void of all good feelings, that she was the more prone to 
think evil of others. I should add, that, though she had no 
good quahties, she yet had some great ones. She had a taste 
for literature, and encouraged men of letters. She loved mag- 
nificence, and promoted all ingenious and hberal arts ; she had 
an uncommon degree of personal courage, and possessed such 
an extraordinary evenness of temper and so much self-com- 
mand, that she never on any occasion lost her presence of 
mind She was by nature cruel, and at the same time had a 
taste for all those gayeties and refinements of life which are 
supposed to have the effect of softening the disposition. She 
was both avaricious and profuse, and united in her character 
the most discordant and contradictory qualities that ever 
woman possessed. 

Mary. Did she show her wickedness by her countenance ? 

Mrs. M. Her face was as deceitful as her mind. She had 
a calm and composed exterior. See was fat and veiy fair, 
with fine eyes, and was altogether a very handsome and en 
gaging-looking woman. 

George. I can not tell why it is, but there seems some- 
thing quite revolting in such a wicked woman's being so hand 
some. 

Mary. You would not have badness and ugliness always 
go together ? 

Richard. I think they often do go together : at least all 
people look ugly when they are angry, and most people look 
handsome, to my way of thinking, when they are good 
humored. 

Mrs. M. Catherine was very vain of her beauty, and, in 
particular, of the symmetry of her hands and arms. She had 
also very well turned ankles, and was at some pains to show 
them, and was the first person in France who wore tight silk 
stockings. Indeed, amid all her political cares, the care of 
the toilet took up much of her time and thoughts, and her 
dress was remarked as generally graceful and becoming. She 
was a great huntress, and introduced, and, if I mistake not 
invented, the side-saddle. Ladies of raiJc in France; tUl then, 
rode on a kind of pad, with a board sus jended lirom it for the 



S36 FBANCIS II. [Chap. XXV IH 

feet to rest on. She had some severe falls from her horse in 
hunting. She at one time broke her leg, and another time 
fractured her skull, and was trepanned. 

Mary. And did not that cure her of hunting ? 

Mrs. M. Her passion for it was incurable, and continued 
even in her old age. Her belief in magic was equally incura- 
able. She constantly wore a cabalistic charm written on 
parchment made from the skm of a child. She was in the 
constant habit of applying to astrologers, and had a restless 
curiosity to pry into futurity. One astrologer told her that all 
hex sons would be kings. 

George. I dare say he said so because he thought it would 
please her ambition. 

Mrs. M. Instead of pleasing her, it grieved her, for it led 
her to fear that they were all destined to die young, and to 
succeed each other as kings of France. She therefore used 
every art to avert that doom and yet to make the presage 
true, by procuring for her two younger sons other crowns. 
She succeeded in getting that of Poland for one, but tried in 
vain to get that of England for the other, by a marriage with 
queen Elizabeth. 

Richard. Our queen Elizabeth was as cunning as she 
was. 

Mrs. M. Another astrologer had told Catherine that she 
should die at a place called St. Germains. She therefore 
carefully avoided all places of that name, and actually aban- 
doned the Tuileries, a splendid palace which she had built for 
her own residence, because she discovered that it stood in the 
parish of St. Germains. 

George. I don't doubt that Catherine was veiy clever, but 
at the same time she must have been very silly. 

Mrs. M. The proudest human mind can not support the 
load of life without something to lean on ; and those who have 
cast away their trust in the God of mercy are the most prone 
to put their faith in spirits of darkness. 

Mary. When you told us of those people who were burned 
alive for their religion, I could npt help wondering how any 
body could have the courage to be a Hugonot. 

Mrs. M. Those martyrs to their religion were doubtless 
supported by faith and zeal ; and the remembrance of the suf- 
ferings of their blessed Master the better enabled them to en- 
dure the extremities of their torture. In those terrible times, 
the indiscriminate rage of persecution seemed to spare nobody, 
A.ny person '<vlio was known to associate with Hugonots wae 



tosr.-i ';'RANCIS II. 337 

regarded as a heretic. Many Catholics were, from tlie hatred 
or avarice of others, denounced as Hugonots, and suffered ac- 
cordingly, Margaret, queen of Navarre, herself found it very 
difficult to avoid persecution. She wrote a devotional book, 
and because there mfls. no mention in it of the saints or of 
purgatory, it wa? condemned as heretical by the doctors of the 
Sorbonne. Even the Psalms of David fell under their anatho 
mas for the same offense ; and Marot, a popular French poet, 
was obliged to fly his country for having had the temerity to 
translate them into French. 

.Ricliard. Is it possible that any people could have been 
PC stupid — so blind — so — 

Mrs. M. Such blindness is indeed surprising, yet there art' 
but too many examples of it. 

Mary. One of the most shocking things of those terrible 
times was, that the ladies should like to see the martyrdoms 
of the poor Hugonots. 

ikfrs. M. I am glad to say that there was one lady who 
did not like it, and that was Anne of Este, the young duchess 
dc Guise. She was daughter of the duke of Ferrara, and of 
the princess Renee of France, and had been brought up by 
ber mother in the reformed principles. At the execution of 
the conspirators of Amboise, she was in an agony of grief, and 
exclaimed, " Shall not the blood which has been shed this day 
be required of me and of my children ?" 

George. There is some comfort in knowing that there 
were two good people in those wicked times, this Anne of 
Este, and the chancellor I'Hopital. 

Mrs. M. Michel de I'Hopital, the A^rtuous chancellor ol 
France, labored all his life to promote religious toleration ; 
insomuch, that he was strongly suspected of being a Hugonot 
himself It is but justice to Catherine de Medicis to say, that 
she uniformly respected the character of I'Hopital, even though 
he never scrupled to oppose her measures when he thought 
them wrong. During the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the 
king sent a guard of soldiers to protect him. 

George. I am glad to hear any good of Catherine or her 
eon. 

Mary. I hope, mamma, you are not going to leave off. 
You know this has been a very short reign. I am sure you 
might find time to tell us something more. 

Mrs. M. The shortness of the reign furnishes me with the 
'ess to say relating to it. 

J^lary Then you may tell us something that does not re 
P 



.133 FRANCIS II LWhap. XXVIII 

late to it. 1 dare say that if you think a litlle you can find a 
great many diverting things you have not yet told us. 

Mrs. M. Well, then, I will tell you an anecdote relating 
to Jane d'Albret, the queen of Navarre. When she was 
about twelve years old, her uncle, Francir I., married her to 
the duke of Cleves. The young bride's dress was overloaded 
with so much finery that she could not walk, and the consta- 
ble Montmorenci was commanded by the king to carry her 
to church in his arms. 

Mary. I am sure that was comical enough. Can you 
recollect any thing else ? 

Mrs. M. I recollect that when speaking to you of the 
constable de Bourbon, I might have told you that there is 
now an orange-tree in the garden of Versailles, which one? 
belonged to him. 

George. It must be a very old tree. 

Mrs. M. It is now more than four hundred years old. )' 
was a hundred years old in the year 1530, when, in the coi? 
fiscation of the constable's property, it came into the royEf" 
possession. 

Ricliard. very large ? 

Mrs. M. 1 is thirty feet high, and the trunk is five fee* 
m circumference, and branches off" into two upright stems 
each as large as a common orange-tree. 

Mary. Now, mamma, somethmg more, if you please. 

Mrs. M. You seem determined to exhaust my store or' 
recollections. Let me give you, then, a short account of th» 
introduction into France of the manufacture of the Gobelin'f 
tapestry. This manufacture was begun in the reign of Franci? 
I., by a man named Giles Gobelin. One of its great excel 
lences consisted in the beauty of the scarlet dye. This dyp 
Gobelin procured from a man at Leyden, whose father ha^ 
discovered the art of making it by a mere accident. 

Richard. Do you know by what accident ? 

Mrs. M. This man had a phial of aqua regia standing 
in a window, near which was also some extract of cochineal 
with which he was going to fill the tube of a thennometer 
The window was framed with tin, a piece of which, being 
loose, fell into the pliial of aqua regia. This phial being 
afterward broken, some of the contents were scattered into 
the extract of cochineal, and changed its color to the most 
beautiful scarlet. 

Richard Do you suppose that any effect was pitdured hy 
that bit ol' tin ? 



A..D. 1560.] 



CHARLES IX. 



339 



Mrs. M. The tin was ascertained, by a varietj of ex peri 
ments, to 173 the chief agent in this chemical transformation 

Mary. It is very entertaining to see how many usefu'. 
things have been discovered by accident. 

Geoi-ge. There is a saying about necessity being the 
mother of invention : I am sure that accident must be oiip 
of her sisters. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

CHARLES IX. 
[Years after Christ, 1560—1574.] 




Catherine de Mkdicis and Charles ihk Ninth. 

The events of the late king's short reign had terded to 
place the affairs of the country in even a worse condition than 
they were in at the death of Henry II. The evils of faction 
were severely felt, and the violence of religious differences 
was increased. 

It was in vain that the chancellor I'Hopital, in a speech 
on the opening of the first assembly of the states in the new 
leign, exhorted to patriotism and religious toleration. These 
virtues were at that time but little known in France. Cath 
erine and the duke of Guise were solely intent on the posses 
siou of power. The duke, although he could not pretend to 



i4ft CHAKLES IX. [Ckap. XXIX 

rule the present king as he had ruled his bother, was ye\ 
very umvilling to give up the authority which he had been 
of late accustomed to exercise. To strengthen his hands, he 
entered into a close confederacy with the constable Montmo- 
renci. The marechal St. Andre was another member of 
this confederacy, which was called the triumvirate. The 
prince of Conde regained his liberty on the late king's death, 
and placed himself at the head of the Hugonots. His brother, 
the king of Navarre, soon after deserted the Hugonots, and 
went over to the party of the triumvirs. 

Catherine, to balance the power of this confederacy, and 
behoving that the grand secret of poUtics was to govern all 
parties by dividing them against each other, now affected to 
entertain a great regard for the Hugonots, and granted them 
several privileges. But these concessions to the Hugonots 
only added strength to the triumvirate ; for the Cathohcs, be- 
coming alarmed, and believing their own church in danger, 
rched for protection cliiefly on the princes of Lorraine. The 
two parties became every day more inflamed, and mutual in- 
sults and retaliations took place. A civil war was ready to 
burst forth, and nothing was wanting but a pretext to begin. 

It was not long before this was found. Several Hugonots, 
>vhile at their devotions in a bam at Vassy, were insulted by 
the servants of the duke of Guise, who was traveling through 
the place. An affray ensued, in which the duke, while en- 
deavoring to quell the tumult, received a blow in the face 
from a stone. His servants, exasperated at seeing their mas- 
ter thus wotuided, attacked the Hugonots, and killed several 
of them. The Hugonots interpreted the massacre of these 
peasants as a premeditated commencement of hostiUties, and 
as a signal to arm. The prince of Conde seized on the town 
of Orleans, and there established the chief seat of his party, 
and published a manifesto, calling on all good Protestants to 
assist him in the common cause. The Hugonots possessed 
themselves also of many other towns in different parts of 
the kingdom. They apphed for assistance to the English 
queen, and put the town of Havre into her hands, as a re 
quital for the succors which she engaged to send them. This 
was the commencement of those dreadful religious wars, to 
which all France was to become a prey for many years — wars 
which were carried on with the greatest animosity, tearing 
asunder all family and social ties, and exposing the wretched 
inhabitants to all the horrors of fire and of the sword. Me 
zerai says, " If any one were to relate all that passed at tins 



A.D. 15C2.^ CHARLES IX oil 

time ia difFereut parts of France, all the taking and retaking 
of towns — the infinity of little combats — the furies — the mas 
gacres, it would take up a great many volumes." I must 
pass over all but the most leading events. 

In 1562, Rouen,* which was in possession of the Hugonots, 
was besieged by the Catholics. During this siege, the king 
of Navarre received a wound, of which he soon after died, at 
Andelys, in his way to Paris. When he found himself dying, 
he sent an express to his queen, exhorting her to keep on hef 
puard, and on no account to trust herself at court. 

The garrison of Rouen was commanded by the count de 
Montgomeri. He defended the town with great spirit, but it 
was at last taken by assault, and was given up to pillage ; a 
circumstance which, to the best of my recollection, has no par- 
allel in the civil wars of England, but which is not unfre- 
queiit in those of France. When Rouen was taken, Mont- 
gomeri saved himself from falling into the enemy's hands by 
hurrying on board a galley. He promised liberty to the crew 
if they got him off. The crew rowed so vigorously that they 
broke through the chains which were placed across the Seine 
at Caudebec,t and landed him in safety at Havre. 

In the same year, a battle was fought at Dreux.J At the 
first onset, St. Andre was killed, and Montmorenci was taken 
prisoner. Some persons who fled, hastened to Paris with the 
intelligence that the Catholics were overthrown. The queen, 
who, perhaps, thought that the victory of the Hugonots was 
more to her advantage than any event which might increase 
the power of the house of Guise, only observed, with the ut- 
most levity, " Well, then, we must now say our prayers in 
French." But the fortune of the battle had in the mean time 
changed. The prince of Conde was taken prisoner, and Co- 
ligny, who then took the command of the Hugonots, was 
obliged to retire from the field. Conda was immediately con- 
veyed to the tent of the duke of Guise, who, seeming to for- 
get that any causes of animosity had subsisted between them, 
received him more as a guest than as a prisoner, and, as a 
mark of his confidence and friendship, made him sleep in the 
same bed with himself Conde afterward declared that 
• Guise slept as soundly as if his best friend, instead of his great- 
est enemy, was lying by his side ; but that, as for hir^isr if, ha 
had not closed his eyes all night. 

* Northwest of Paris, on the Seine. 

t Near the mouth of the Seine. 

{ West of Paris, near the frontieV of Normandy. 



342 CHARLES TX. [Chap XXIX 

1x1 February, 1563, the Catholic army, under the command 
of the duke of GiLise, laid siege to Orleans. The town was 
on the point of being taken, when one evening, as the duke 
was returning to the camp irom a visit to his family, he re- 
ceived a mortal wound in the shoulder by a pistol-shot fired 
at him by a man named Poltrot. The duke instantly fell, 
smd the assassin, putting spurs to his horse, galloped ofl". 
After having ridden full speed the whole of the night, which 
was extremely dark, Poltrot supposed himself to be many 
miles from Orleans. But when daylight broke, he found him- 
self only about a mile from the spot from which he had first 
set out. His horse was unable to go a step farther, and he 
was constrained to seek shelter in a house, where, throwing 
himself on a bed, he soon fell asleep. In this state he was 
discovered, and being put to the torture, he accused several 
persons of having been his instigators, and, among others, the 
admiral Coligny. Coligny protested his irmocence, and de 
manded to be confronted with his accuser ; but this favor was 
denied him. Poltrot was put to death with savage cruelty 
Guise lived only six days after his wound ; but, before he 
died, he exhorted Catherine to make peace with the Hugo- 
nots. He left three sons, Henry, who succeeded him in his 
dukedom, the cardinal de Guise, and Charles, dulte de May 
enne. He had one daughter, married to the duke de Mont- 
pensier. The queen, in compliance with the dying advice of 
the duke of Guise, made peace with the Hugonots, and grant- 
ed them very favorable conditions. These conditions were 
never fulfilled, but hostilities did not break out again for 
above four years. 

Catherine made use of this interval to conduct the king on 
a royal progress to different parts of his kingdom, with a vie\*' 
to ascertain, if possible, the real strength of the Hugonots. 
At Bayonne, the royal party was met by Elizabeth, or, as she 
was called by the Spaniards, Isabella, queen of Spain, to 
whom Philip II. allowed the indulgence of a visit to her 
mother and brother. She was escorted by the duke of Alva, 
Philip's proud and cruel minister ; and Catherine, who often 
concealed under the cloak of festivities the most bloody and 
relentless purposes, is believed to have held with him secret 
conferences, which had for their object the extirpation of the 
Protestants. But, with all Catherine's art, she could not 
avert the suspicion which justly attached both to her measures 
and her character. The Protestants had long observed that; 
though she had often made them flattening promises, yet thesa 



!v.]) 150?. I CHARLES IX 34^ 

promises were never performed. Perpetual outrages Mere 
committed by the Catholics both on their persons and their 
property. The duke of Alva, after the meeting at Bayonne, 
was appointed to the command of a numerous army in the 
liow Countries, now in a state of revolt against Philip's au- 
thority. He VI as the known enemy of their religion : he 
might easily enter France and liirther the designs of the 
queen-mother against them. 

Thus goaded by past, and apprehensive of future injuries, 
the Hugonots flew to arms in 1567. Their first enterprise 
was an imsuccessful attempt to possess themselves of the per- 
son of the young king, who was then at Meaux.* They 
next proceeded to Paris, which they held in blockade during 
eight days. The constable Montmorenci had the command 
of the city ; and the Parisians, impatient under the restraints 
of a blockade, obliged him, contrary to his judgment, to 
march out and attack the enemy, who were exceedingly infe- 
rior in numbers. The two armies encountered in the plain 
of St. Denis, and the Hugonots were worsted ; but the victo- 
ry was dearly bought by the death of the constable, who, 
although in the seventy-fifth year of his age, fought with the 
courage and activity of youth. Even when at last he fell 
covered with wounds, he had so much vigor left, that, by a 
blow with the pommel of his sword, he beat out some of the 
teeth, and broke the jawbone, of Robert Stewart, a Scots- 
man, who had given him his last and mortal wound. 

To Catherine herself, the death of Montmorenci was a sub- 
ject rather of rejoicing than of regret. She had now got rid 
of all whose influence she was afraid of, and hoped to rule 
undisturbed for the future. She persuaded the king not to 
appoint another constable, but to give the command of the 
royal armies to her third and favorite son, Henry, duke of 
Anjou. This prince was only sixteen years old, and was 
therefore placed under the guidance of the marechal Tavan- 
nes, an experienced and skillful general, who was in all 
Catherine's secrets, and had been long devoted to her service. 
He had even on one occasion carried his obsequiousness sc 
far, as to make her the offer to cut ofi^ the nose of her rival, 
the duchess of Valentinois. This offer, however, Catherine 
declined. 

After the battle of St. Denis, a peace was patched up with 
the Hugonots, but it was ill kept, and in a few months the 
wm broke out more furiously than ever. On March 13, 1569 

* A short distance ea;t of Pai'U. 



344 CHARLES IX. r^EiP. XXIX 

the two parties met on the banks of the rivtr Charente,-* nea.i 
the town of Jarnac. The royal army was nearly four timea 
stronger than that of the adversary. Conde entered the field 
of battle with his arm in a sling, from the effects of a former 
wound. Before the engagement commenced, a kick from a 
restive horse broke his leg ; but, undaunted by this accident, 
he made a short and animated harangue to his soldiers, and 
rushed forward against the enemy. The Hugonots fought 
with desperate courage, but, overpowered by superior num 
bers, were at length obliged to fly. Conde, as you may well 
suppose, was now unable to move, and was compelled to allow 
himself to be taken prisoner. He was lifted from his horse, 
and placed on the ground, under the shade of a tree. Here 
one of the captains of the duke of Anjou's guard basely cama 
behind him, and shot him "dead. He left three young sons, 
Henry, who succeeded as prince of Conde, the count of Sois- 
sons, and the prince of Conti. 

Henry, prince of Beam, now about sixteen years of age, th'j 
son of Anthony, late king of Navarre, was, on Conde's death, 
declared the head of the Protestants ; but, on account of his 
youth, the command of their forces was given to Coligny, 
Rochelle f was at this time one of their chief bulwarks, and 
here the queen of Navarre resided with her family, together 
with many of the principal leaders of the Hugonot cause. 

In the following October, the Catholics obtained another 
victory at Montcontour ; t but their opponents, though often 
beaten, were far from being subdued. In 1570, Coligny 
transferred the war into Burgundy, where he obtained the 
advantage. Peace was again made, and Coligny was sent 
for to court. He went reluctantly, and with hesitation, but 
the apparently cordial and sincere manner of the king soon 
effaced all unpleasant suspicions, and lulled him into secvirity. 
Some authors say, and we may, I hope, incline to believe 
them, that Charles was really sincere, and actually meant at 
the time to fulfill his professions. But the common notion is, 
that the whole of the shocking perfidy which I have here to 
relate was a deep laid plot of his and his mother's conaiving. 
Catherine, to calm the suspicions of the Protestants, proposed 
and concluded a marriage between the prince of Beam and 
her daughter Margaret. The queen of Navarre was invited 
to Paris to be present at tie nuptials. It would, perhaps, 
have besn better for her if she had adhered to her husband'? 

* The Charente is north of the Garonne, in the western part of Franco, 
t A little north of the Charente- X Northeast fi-om La Rochella. 



k.D. 1572.] CHARLES IX. ft* 

iiijunctionSj and had rot ventured to court. .She, however 
came, and was apparently received by Charles with the open 
hearted affection due to a relative ; but it is said that, wheo [ 
their interview was ov^.:, he boasted to his mother, " how weL 
he had acted his part.'' The pope had opposed with all hia 
power the marriage of Margaret with a Hugonot prince, but' 
it is said that Charles assured the pope's legate of his own 
fntiro devotion to the Holy See, and pressing his hand, added 
these remarkable words : " O ! if it were only in my power tc 
explain myself more fully." 

In the midst of the preparations for the marriage of the 
young prince and princess, the queen of Navarre died suddenly. 
Her death is now generally attributed to some constitutional 
disease ; but at the time the Protestants naturally took alarm 
at it, and many of them beUved it to have been procured by 
means of a poisoned pair of gloves, which she had purchased 
of Catherine's Italian perfumer. The marriage of Henry, 
now, by his mother's death, king of Navarre, with Margaret 
of Valois, took place August 18, 1572. It is said that the 
bride was extremely averse to it ; that the being united to a 
Hugonot filled her with repugnance and horror ; and that her 
afiections had been previously fixed on the duke of Guise. 
But Catherine was not accustomed to let the feelings of others 
stand in the way of her own schemes. 

The court was now, to all appearance, fully occupied with 
banquets, masquerades, and other splendid entertainments. 
The Hugonots were treated with the greatest attention. The 
inhabitants of Roohelle repeatedly sent entreaties to Coligny 
to quit Paris, and " not trust himself in the power of a king 
whose passions were uncontrollable, and of an Italian woman, 
whose dissimulation was unfathomable." But Coligny would 
not hearken to their cautions, and declared himself ready to 
abide all hazards rather than show a distrust which might 
plunge the country again into a civil war. 

On August 22d, as Coligny was returning from the Louvre 
to his hotel, and walking slowly, perusing some papers, he wag 
fired at by a man stationed behind a grated window. He 
was wounded in two places, but it was thought not danger- 
ously. On being conveyed home, he was instantly surrounded 
by the alarmed and agitated Hugonots. It was discovered 
that the assassin was a servant of the duke of Guise, and that 
he had been stationed for two days behind the window to wail 
for his victim. The king and Catherine, on hearing of this 
outrage, visited Cohgny in his bed c.hamb<?> fixpressed tha 



846 CHARLES IX \.Cnip. XXIX 

greatest cononi at the accident, and sent liim a guard of 
their own soldiers, as if for his protection. They professed 
great anxiety lest the Parisians should commit any act oi 
hostility against the Protestants ; they gave orders to close 
all the city gates except two, under color of preventing the 
escape of the assassin ; and had an account laid before them 
of the names and places of abode of all the Hugonots in Paris 
on the pretense of taking them under their immediate protec- 
tion. Every thing remained quiet during two days. It waa 
like the calm before a thunder storm. 

The transactions of the bloody day of St. Bartholomew are 
hivolved in great obscurity. Some assert that the massacre 
had been planned two years before it was executed. Others^ 
that the death of Coligny alone was the main object of Cath 
erine's machinations, and that the slaughter which followed 
was an after thought on the part of the court, and resorted to 
as an act of self-defense against the Hugonots, who might be 
expected to revenge the death of the admiral. On Saturday, 
August the 23d, it was finally determined that the massacre 
should begin that night, and that the signal should be the 
Btriking of the tocsin, or great bell of the palace. The Swiss 
guards and the city militia were ordered to be in readiness, 
wearmg a white cross on their hats, and % scarf on their left 
arms. 

As the hour approached, the king, less hardened than his 
mother, was in the greatest agitation : he trembled from head 
to foot, and the perspiration ran down his forehead. Plis 
mother and the duke of Anjou had great difficulty in keeping 
him steady to his purpose. The queen at length fjrced a 
command from him to commence the slaughter, and then, to 
prevent the possibility of his retracting, she hastened, js it is 
Baid, the fatal signal, which was given at half-past one o'clock 
in the morning by the great bell of the palace. On the first 
Bound, the implacable Guise flew to the house of Coligny, and 
there completed his bloody purpose ; not indeed by liis own 
hands, for he remained below, and sent up his people to the 
admiral's chamber. The venerable old man, disablei^ by his 
late wounds, had no other defense than his calm, intrepid 
countenance. La Besme, a German servant of the duke of 
Guise, approached him with his drawn sword in his hand. 
"Young man," said Cohgny, "you ought to reverence these 
gray hairs ; but do what you think proper ; my life can be 
shortened but a very little." La Besme made no answer, but 
plunged the sword into the admiral's body, while the othei 



k.D. 1572.J CHARLES IX. 347 

assassins dispat< lied Lim with their daggers ; they then thre-w 
the body out of the window. The head was cut off and car- 
vied as a trophy to the queen, who, it is said, caused it to be 
enibaiined, and sent it as a present to the pope. The head- 
less trunk was dragg 3d abqut the streets by the frantic mob 
who afterward hung it on a gibbet at Montfaucon, where it 
remained some days, scorched, though not consumed, by a fire 
which was hghted under it. The king and his mother came 
to view it. At last it was secretly conveyed away by orders 
of the marechal Montmorenci, who gave it honorable burial 
in his chapel at Chantilly.* 

I must now return to the other events of this horrid mas- 
sacre. When morning dawned, the king, who had got rid of 
his tremors, called for his long fowling-piece, and placed him- 
self at one of the windows of the palace which looked on the 
Seine, and employed himself in firing on the wretched Hugo- 
nots who were endeavoring to secure themselves by crossing 
the river. He continually exclaimed, as he aimed at the fu 
gitives, "Kill them I kill them! My God, they are es- 
caping I" 

Henry of Navarre, and the young prince of Conde, and 
several other Hugonots, were, by the king's particular desire, 
lodged in the Louvre. All were sacrificed with the exception 
of the two princes. The queen-mother even looked from her 
window at the slaughtered bodies as they were brought out 
and thrown into the court of the palace. In the city, also, 
the work of death was going on with equal ferocity, and did 
not entirely cease during seven days. More than five thou- 
sand persons of all ranks are supposed to have perished in 
Paris alone. Some few had been so fortunate as to save 
themselves by fhght at the first alarm. Others were pre- 
served by the humanity of some of the Catholics. The. 
marechal Biron, who was in the post of master of the artil- 
lery, gave to some a secure refuge at the arsenal ; and the 
duke of Guise himself gave protection in his own house to 
, uiany whom he was desirovis to attach to his service. One 
floor boy saved his life by concealing himself under the mui'- 
dered bodies of his father and brother, and afterward lived to 
De a marechal of France, The massacre was not confined to 
Paris ; orders were also sent into the provinces to put the 
Hugonots to the sword. In many places these orders were 
toa well obeyed, but not in all. The governor of Bayonne, we 
%j» told, in answer to the king's mandate, \vrote as follows " 
A sb*>vt distance north of Paria- 



S48 Cf[ARLES IX [Chap. XXIX 

" Your majesty has many faithful servaKts in Bayonne, but 
not one executioner." 

The court, for a time, exulted in its victory. Charles was 
heard to declare, that now he had got rid of the rehels, he 
should live in peace. Alas I he l\ad murdered forever all hia 
own peace. His and Catherine's punishment soon began. 
Instead of living in peace, they were a prey to constant dis' 
quietude. At one time the king denied all participation iii 
the massacre, and threw the whole blame of it on the duke 
of Guise. The very next day he avowed the deed publicly, 
and gloried in it, and had a solemn mass performed to cele- 
brate what he called the victory over the Protestants, and 
had medals struck in commemoration of it. 

The authors of the massacre, to throw the more odium on 
the Protestants, and, as they hoped, to justify themselves, 
pretended that Cohgny had formed a plot to kill the king. 
They instituted a mock trial against him for treason ; they 
sentenced him to be hung in effigy ; they commanded every 
portrait of him to be destroyed and trampled on by the com- 
mon hangman. His property was confiscated, his house at 
Chatillon leveled with the ground, and his children degraded 
from their rank. To give more color to this imaginary plot, 
they accused two innocent men as being accessory to it, and 
caused them to be hung on the same gibbet, from which was 
suspended also the effigy of the admiral. 

Conde and the king of Navarre were for a time kept pris- 
oners in the Louvre. Both persuasions and threats were ra 
sorted to, to make them renounce their Protestant principles 
and at last these princes, young, without friends and advisers 
and overcome with grief, dismay, and horror at the scene? 
Vt^hich were passing around them, yielded to the pressure of 
their circumstances, and consented to profess themselves Cath- 
olics ; but they retracted this profession as soon as they had 
regained their hberty. The natural consequence of these 
shocking transactions was, that Charles and Catherine were 
universally held up to execration, excepting, indeed, in the , 
courts of Madrid and Rome. In the latter a jubilee was 
proclaimed by Gregory XIII. to celebrate what he termed 
" the triumph over heresy." 

The Hugonots, who were at first paralyzed with horror, 
soon regained their activity and flew to arms, and their per- 
eecutors found that instead of extirpating heresy, they had 
made the heretics desperate. Bochelle was besieged by the 
royal army, but was defended with so much vigor during a 



A.D, 1573.1 CHARLES IX. 319 

protracted siege, that tu\i duke of Anjou, who commanded the 
assailants, found it expedient to negotiate. A treaty bearing 
date July 6, 1573, was concluded with the whole of the 
Hugonot party. 

Before this siege concluded, the duke of Anjou received in- 
telligence that he was elected to the crown of Poland. The 
duke himself was little desirous of this advancement. He re- 
gretted leaving the delights and enjoyments of France, and 
delayed as lojig as he could to set out for Poland. But Charles 
who hail long regarded him with a jsalous eye, as being hia 
mother's and the people's favorite, at length compelled him 
to depart. He himself designed to have accompanied him to 
the frontier of France, but was seized on the way with a 
fever and a pain in the heart, and was unable to continue his 
journey. The. queen-mother proceeded to Blamont in Lor- 
raine, and her last words to the king of Poland were, " Go, 
my son, take possession of your kingdom ; your stay there will 
not be long." These words raised a suspicion that Charles's 
illness was the efiect of poison which his mother had given 
him. His illness has, however, been also attributed to the 
effects of over exertion, and more particularly to his fondness 
for blowing the French horn, v/hich he indulged in to an ex- 
cess which injured his lungs. 

On the departure of the king of Poland, the count d'Alen- 
con, Catherine's youngest son, aspired to the post of lieuten- 
ant-general of the royal armies. But Charles refused to give 
it liim, and bestowed it on the duke of Lorraine. Alencon 
was a wild and capricious young man, with little sense oi 
judgment His person was diminutive, and this, as he was 
naturahy vain, mortified him extremely, and led him perhaps 
to engage the more eagerly in the pursuits of ambition. He 
has been described as of great hastiness, both in forming en- 
terprises and in deserting them almost as soon as they were 
formed. He now made an attempt to go over to the Hu- 
gonots ; but Catherine, having gained intelligence of hia 
purpose, caused him and the king of Navarre to be put undei 
arrest. 

The king's health now rapidly declined, and he was visibly 
hastening to the grave. He had never been quite himself 
since the day of St. Bartholomew. His complexion, which 
before was pale, was now often flvished ; his eyes acquired an 
unnatural fierceness, his nights were restless and disturbed, 
and his sleep unrefreshing. As his disosler increased, everj 
Byinptom was aggravated. He was seUom still for an la 



»;.0 CHARLES IX. [Chip. XXIX 

Btant His limbs would at one moment be distorted by con 
vulsive twitches, ani the nest so stiff that he could not bend 
them ; and the blood would ooze from the pores of his skin 
His physicians, unable to comprehend his disorder, affirmed 
that it was the effect of poison, or of sorcery. Nor was his 
mind less agitated than his bodily frame. The recollection 
of the massacre continually hauu ted him, and he was fre- 
quently OA'^erheard bewailing his crime with bitter tears and 
groans. Catherine, who thought more of securintr her own 
power than of his sufferings, disturbed his dying moments by 
making him give her a commission of regency for the interval 
wliich must ensue between his death and the return of his 
brother, the king of Poland, into France. 

Charles breathed his last. May 30, 1574. He was in the 
twenty-fourth year of his age, and had reigned thirteen years. 

He married Elizabeth, daughter of the emperor Maximilian 
II., a gentle-tempered and virtuous princess, too good for the 
scenes to which she was brought. By her he had one daugh- 
ter, EHzabeth, who died in 1578, at the age of five. 

The cardinal of Lorraine, who had been one of the most 
active contrivers of the massacre of the Hugonots, died a few 
months after the king, in a state of raving madness. 

It is singular that during this unhappy reign, which on the 
part of the court was one continued scene of wrong and cruel- 
ty, many judicious laws were enacted, many wise regulations 
made regarding the police, and many abuses reformed in the 
administration of justice. All these benefits were the work 
of the great Michel I'Hopital. Dismissed from the office 
of chancellor by the queen, when she found that his integritj' 
interfered with her own schemes, and seeing that aU his ef- 
forts were vain to stem the torrent of poUtical corruption, he 
turned all his attention to improve the laws, and to increase 
their efficacy, and in this important field of usefulness he 
'abored almost without intermission. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XXIX. 

Kichard. How much the remorse and sufferings of Charles 
disarin one's resentment ' I protest I quite felt compassion 
for him at last. 

Mrs. Markham. It is generally agreed that Charles was 
endowed by nature with many valuable qualities ; but these 
^•ere all perverted by a bad education He had a good ca 



OoNV.} CHARLEb ]X. 351 

pacity, a retentive memory, and was a ready and eloquent 
speaker. 

George. But his education, you say, was neglected ? 

Mrs. M. It can not properly be sa:d to have been ncg 
lectcd. His miefortune was to ha\e been taught what was 
bad. His mother trained him early in the art of dissimula- 
tion, and instructed him to consider It as the main principle 
in the science of government. The marechal de Retz, an 
Italian of low birth, to whom the care of his education was 
confided, made it his business to stifle as much as possible 
every germ of goodness in his young mind, and to encourage 
him in dissolute habits. He taught him to be a profane 
swearer, but he could not succeed in the attempt to make 
him a drunkard. He was once prevailed on to drink to in- 
toxication, but he was so much ashamed of having been seen 
in that disgusting condition, that he could never be induced to 
commit the same excess again, and he was ever after remark- 
ably abstemious in drinking, and also in eating. 

Mary. I can not imagine why Catherine should wish that 
her son should be made wicked. 

Mrs. M. It is supposed that she desired to see him im- 
mersed in degrading vices, that he might be the less inclined 
to interfere with her politics. 

George. How I wish he had disappointed her, and grown 
up good in spite of her I 

Mrs. M. Poor Charles, I doubt not, would have joined 
you in that wish, for his vices certainly brought him any 
thing rather than happiness. He had by nature an ardent 
and vehement character. Whatever he did, he did with vio- 
lence. When he danced, it was with such impetuosity and 
perseverance, that the ladies of the court dreaded him for a 
partner. When he hunted, it was as if it was a matter of 
life and death. He loved all kinds of hard labor, and would 
take delight m working at a blacksmith's forge ; and no la- 
borer toihng for his bread would work harder than he would 
do for his amusement. His bodily strength was prodigious, 
and it seemed as if violent exercise alone could allay the con- 
stant restlessness of his mind. He was an excellent gun- 
smith ; but the art he most excelled in was that of making 
false money ; and he would often vaunt of his dexterity in 
passing it. 

Mary. Don't you think he must have been half mad ? 

Mrs. M. His temper was verj- irritable, and he is sup- 
pofced to have increased t aat evil by not allowing himse'/ 



352 CHARLES IX [Chap. XXIX 

proper sleep When a toy, he loved cruel sports, a taste 
which he did not leave off in manhood. He was extremely 
fond of practical and tormenting- jokes ; hut whether all tliia 
could entitle him to the excuse of madness I can not pretend 
to say. 

Mary. Do you recollect any of his jokes ? 

Mrs. M. One of them was as follows : — On some great 
occasion, when he gave a splendid entertainment at the 
Louvre, he introduced into the assemhly ten of the most no- 
torious pickpockets in Paris, and gave them full license to 
practice their nefarious art upon the company. Of this lib- 
erty, you may be assured, they fuUy availed themselves, while 
the king amused himself with watching their proceedings. 
When the entertainment was over, he made them show him 
their gains, which, it is said, were prodigious. 

George. Did he go shares with them ? 

Mrs. M. Not quite so bad as that. It does not appear 
that covetousness was one of Charles's faults. He suffered 
the thieves to depart with their plunder, but threatened to 
have them all hanged, if they ever stole again. 

JSIary. Do you laiow, mamma, what sort of looking man 
he was ? 

George. According to Richard's rule, he ought not to 
have been very handsome. 

Mrs. M. He was a tall, large man, and tolerably well 
made, but spoiled his appearance by a habit of stooping, and 
by an awkward way of holding his head on one side. He 
had rather handsome eyes, and an aquiline nose. His com- 
plexion was fair and pale, and his countenance haggard and 
unpleasing. 

Richard. I think my rule will hold good in this instance, 
at least. 

Mrs. M. The best trait in Charles's character was hia 
fondness for his old nurse. He protected her, notwithstand 
ing her being a Protestant, during the massacre. He alwaya 
retained her near his person, and she attended him in his last 
moments, and witnessed the struggles of his remorse. 

George. If his wicked mother had witnessed them also, 
it might perhaps have done her some good. 

Mrs. M. I have met with an account of Charles's sufier- 
ings in his last illness, which appears to me very touching 
and impressive. I will give you a short extract from it. 
" As his old nurse was watching him, she, being weary, sal 
down on a chest by the bed-side, and began to doze. Pres 



CoNV.] CHARLES IX. 35«i 

ently she was awaKened by hearing the king bemoaning him- 
self with tears and gioans. She approached the bed very 
gently, and opened the curtains. The king thgn said, with a 
heavy groan, ' Aii, nurse, nurse I what b.'ood I what murders ' 
Ah, I have followed a wicked counsel I O my God, forgive 
me, have mercy upon me if thou wilt I' " After a few moiv 
bitter lamentations, the nurse gave him a dry handkerchief, 
his own being steeped with tears, and closing the curtains, left 
Jim to repose. 

George. What a comfort it must have been to Charles iu 
riis agonies, that he had saved his old nurse's life I 

Mrs. M. He also saved another Hugonot, wdio was hia 
Burgeon. 

Richard. Do the French still consider the massacre of St 
Bartholomew as a triumph over heresy ? 

Mrs. M. When the delirium of party fury subsided, they 
could not but learn to view it in its true light, and all writ- 
ers now join in condemning it. Margaret of Valois, the king 
of Navarre's young bride, has given xxs, in the memoirs of hei 
life, a description of the horrors which she herself was a wit- 
ness to during that memorable night of the 24th of August. 

Richard. I should like to read it. 

Mrs. M. The language is rather difficult, but I will trans 
late some passages for you. Margaret was not admitted into 
the secret of the projected massacre, for fear she should be- 
tray it to her husband. She says, " Nobody said any thing 
to me till the evening, when, being in the queen's chamber, 
seated on a chest near my sister of Lorraine, who I saw was 
very sad, the queen my mother perceived me, and told me to 
go to bed. As I made my reverence, my sister took me in her 
arms, and told me not to go. This frightened me extremely. 
The queen called to my sister, and rebuked her very severely, 
forbidding her to tell me any thing. My sister replied that 
there was no reason why I should be sacrificed, and that if 
the Hugonots discovered any thing, they would, without doubt, 
revenge themselves on me. The queen replied, that if it was 
God's will, no harm would happen to me ; but let it be as it 
might, I must go, to avoid exciting any suspicion. I saw 
that the queen and my sister differed, but I could not hear 
their w^ords. The queen then ordered me still more rudely 
to go to bed, and my sister, bathed in tears, wished me good 
night, without daring to say another word, and I went, all 
agitated and trembling, without being able to imagine what I 
had to fear." 



354 CHARLES IX. LChap XXIX 

George. Well I this is the most cold-blooded deed of all *. 
1 think that Catherine de Medicis gets wickeder and wickedei 
the more one knows of her I 

Mrs. M. The rest of Margaret's story is too long to give 
you in her own words ; I must therefore abridge it. She 
was disturbed all night by the presence of some Hugonot gen- 
tlemen, who came to confer with her husband. At last, at 
day-break, he and they departed, and she then hoped to be 
able to get some sleep, but was suddenly roused by a violent 
noise at her chamber-door. The door being opened by her 
nurse, who lay in her apartment, a man streaming with blood 
rushed in, pursued by four archers. This man darted toward 
the bed, and clung to her for protection, while she did not 
know whether she herself or the wounded man was the vic- 
tim they sought. Her shrieks brought M. Nanci, the captain 
of the guard. He sent away the archers, and allowed Mar- 
garet to conceal the fugitive in an inner apartment, where 
he lay concealed till he was cured of his wounds. Margaret, 
after changing her night-dress, which was all smeared with 
blood, hurried with trembling steps to her sister's chamber 
In one of the passages she encountered another poor fugitive, 
whose pursuers overtook him, and slew him with their hal- 
berds, so close to her that she expected to have been wounded 
herself, and would have fainted, if M. Nanci had not sup- 
ported her. 

Mary. I am only surprised she did not die of fright I 

Richard. Pray, mamma, do you know which was reck- 
oned the best general, the prince of Conde, or the admiral 
Coligny. 

Mrs. M. I can not pretend to say which was the best 
general, but I do not hesitate in saying which was the best 
man. Conde's private character was very faulty, and his 
public conduct was much actuated by personal resentments, 
and selfish ambition. Coligny, on the other hand, was a man 
of the purest life, and of strict religious principle. He had 
an extraordinary enlargement of mind, and in happier times 
might have been the pride and glory of France. Excepting 
the unjust charge of his conniving at the murder of the duke 
of (jruise, his heresy was the only crime which his enemies 
could ever find to accuse him of. 

Mary. And that is no crime in the eyes of us English 
people. 

Mrs M. Nor is it now in the eyes of his own country- 
men, who do ample justice to his memory. The house in 



»JoN7.| CHARLES IX. 35a 

which he was assassinated is still standing in the Rue BethisL 
It is an inn, and the room m which he died is still shown. 

Mary. It seems very strange to call him an admiral, 
while all the while he was a general. 

Mrs. M. In old times the offices of general and admiral 
were often held by the same person. The post of admiral of 
France was conferred by Henry II. on Coligny, as a reward 
for his bravery in the wars with Spain. Even during the 
tumult of the civil wars, he also sometimes acted as admiral, 
and earnestly labored to extnid commerce and improve navi- 
gation ; but the times were very unfavorable to his endeavors. 
Cohgny first attempted to establish a French settlement in 
America. He fitted out an expedition in 1562, to take pos- 
sesion of Florida, which he hoped might be made a place of 
refuge for the persecuted Hugonots. 

Mary. And was it so ? 

Mrs. M. The first settlers were entirely destroyed by the 
Spaniards. At this time the French navy was behind that 
of all the other nations in Europe, and could do but little for 
the support or protection of distant colonies. One cause of 
this naval inferiority is to be found in the constant wars 
which the French waged on the continent. Another cause 
was, perhaps, the scarcity of good harbors. Nature, very 
profuse to them in most other things, has been sparing in that 
respect. 

Richard. I thought there were some very fine harbors in 
France. 

Mrs. M. So there are now, but most of them are the 
work of art, and of after-times. Several early but ineffectl^al 
uttempts had been made to procure a marine. Francis I., 
who loved to do every thing on a magnificent scale, had the 
largest ship built that ever had been seen in France. She 
was two thousand tons burden.* 

George I dare say she was built in imitation of the old 
English ship The Great Harry. 

Mrs. M. Very probably. She had on board a windmill, 
and a tennis-court, and her cables were of the thickness of a 
man's leg. She was built for the purpose of some great en- 
terprise, but made only one voyage, and that a very short one. 
She was launched at Havre, and could get no further than 
the end of the pier, whsrs she stuck fast. From her enor- 
mous bulk she could not be got off", and was obliged to be 
broken up 

* Her name was La Grande Franfaise. 



if56 



CHAELES IX. 



[Ch.i> XXIX 



Gtorge. You have several times spoken of galleys. What 
sort of vessels are they ? 

Mrs. M. They are decked vessels, with a great number 
of oars. To row these vessels is very laborious work, and ia 
commonly made a punishment for criminals, who, instead of 
being sent to the hulks, as with us, are condemned to work 
for a term of years, or sometimes for life, on board these 
galleys.* 

Mary. Don't they sometimes jump overboard and swim 
away ? 

Mrs. M. They are chained to their benches, so that they 
can not escape. 

* The rowing in galleys has heen almost entirely, if not entirely, giro 
flp Bince the introduction of steam navigation. 




MCSFHBKT OP SOBTXOBKXOl 



CHAPTER XXX. 

HENRY III. 
lYears after Chrict, 1574— ISBB.] 




Kerry III. and his Queen. 

Henry was at Cracow, in Poland, when the news of hn 
brother's death reached him. Instead of notifying the event 
to the senate, that measures might he taken for the govern- 
ment of Poland during his absence, he was so impatient of the 
smallest delay, that he fled secretly in the night, and never 
stopped tUl he had passed the confines of the kingdom. Here 
he was overtaken by some of the Polish nobles, who entreated 
him to return, which he promised to do as soon as he had 
settled the affairs of France. Henry lingered by the way in 
Germany and Italy, as if to enjoy the delights of freedom, be- 
fore he was again fettered by the, restraints of a throne. Ho 
arrived at Lyons early in September, where his mother met 
him, and resigned the regency. 

Henry had in his early years displayed some degree of man- 
liness ; but every flattering appearance of character soon van- 
ished; and now, altho^;gh in his twenty-third year, he was 
more like a wayward boy than a man. He took httle or nc 
share ir tlie administration of afl'airs, which he abandoned to 



358 HENRY III. [Chap. XXX 

his mother and his favorites. He lived shut up in his palase, 
occupied in devising new fashions in dress, and diverting him- 
self with monkeys and lap-dogs, and in every frivolous and 
childish amusement. The queen encouraged rather than 
checked these follies, because they left her the more at liberty 
to gratify her own inordinate love of dominion. 

The Poles, finding that Henry had no intention to return, 
elected another king, and Henry and his late subjects soon 
thought no more of one another. 

The king had long been deeply enamored of the princess of 
Conde : indeed it is said to have been his passion for her that 
had made him so unwilling to accept the crown of Poland. 
He now determined to make her his wife, presuming that as 
the prince of Conde had returned to the profession of the 
Protestant faith, a divorce might easily be obtained between 
him and the princess. But while this affair was in agitation, 
the princess died suddenly ; and Catherine has been suspected 
of poisoning her, as being the easiest way of getting her son 
out of what she considered a foolish scrape. What truth 
there was in this suspicion, I can not pretend to say The 
king, during three days, abandoned himself to the most frantic 
excesses of grief. At the end of that time, having exhausted 
his sorrow, he resumed his usual occupations ; but for some 
time after he wore, as a token of his regard for the princess, 
little death's heads instead of the silver tags which were then 
much worn in the dresses of gentlemen. 

The duke of Alencon, and the king of Navarre, who had 
been detained by Catherine in a sort of custody, made their 
escape, the one in September, 1575, and the other in the 
February following, and joined the Hugonots. A treaty with 
the Hugonots was concluded soon after, but on terms which 
were considered by the Catholics as being much too favorable 
to the Protestants. Many of the Catholics, therefore, believ- 
ing their church to be in danger, formed themselves into a 
league for the defense of their religion. 

The chief promoter of this league was the duke of Guise, a 
man every way fitted to be the head of a party. He pos- 
sessed, in an eminent degree, the qualities which had been so 
conspicuous in his father and uncle. Jiike his father, he was 
the idol of the populace. He had brilliant talents, was gen- 
erous to profusion, insinuating and engaging in his address. 
and had a towering ambition, which neither principle nor 
honor could restrain. He had been wounded in the cheek 
in an engagement with the Hugonots, and this accident ao 



A.I> 1578 ] HENRY III. 359 

quired for him the surname of the scarred.- The king was 
induced to declare himself the head of the league, although 
th(j principles of the party were in reality subversive of thb 
royal authority. But this Kcr.-/ did not discover until he 
was brought to the brink of ruin. 

The flames of the civil war again broke forth, and again 
died away. But, even when it was called peace, private 
animosities raged in an unexampled degree. The social ties 
eeen^ed broken ; and the true reason why so much violence 
was manifested during the period of the wars of religion was, 
that religion was often little else than the pretext of men 
whose minds were almost wholly guided and absorbed by the 
irreligious spirit of revenge, and by unprincipled ambition. 

The duke of Alencon, who had neither honesty nor consist 
ency, abandoned the king of Navarre, and reconciling himself 
to his brother, had the dukedom of Anjou conferred on him. 
In 1578 he engaged in a treaty with the Flemings, to assist 
their efforts to throw off the yoke of Spain, a yoke which the 
tyranny of Philip II. now made more than ever intolerable. 
Anjou had the title given him of Protector of the Belgic Lib- 
erties, and entered the Netherlands with a considerable force. 
But his desire to make himself king at last betraying itself, 
the Flem.ings became distrustful of him, and he found him- 
self obliged to return to France. He long indulged the hope 
of marrying Elizabeth, queen of England ; but all his hopes 
of aggrandizement miscarried, and he died, humiliated and 
dejected, June 10, 1584. 

The death of the duke of Anjou made a great change in 
affairs. The king, who had now been married some years, 
had no children, and the king of Navarre thus became the 
presumptive heir of the throne. The character of this great 
prmoe began to display itself. His superior talents and noble 
nature had long been obscured by adverse circumstances. But 
the prospect of his succession, while it animated the spirits of 
the Hugonots, filled the Catholics with a corresponding dread. 
They joined heartily in any scheme to exclude him, and, undei 
the plea that his claims were forfeited by his religion, they 
chose to consider his uncle, the old cardina of Bourlon, aa 
the immediate heir of the crown of France. The duke of 
G uise was the chief supporter of this choice, hoping that, aa 
the cardinal was weak in intellect, and now infirm from age, 
he would (should he come to the crown) be but the shadow 
of a king, and that he himself should govern in his name. 
The king, howevor, would never consent tc set aside the 



360 hEJSHY III. ;,Chjp XXX. 

claims of llie king of Navarre. He sent pressing invitations 
to him, in liis own and liis mother's name, to come to court ; 
but the king of Navarre would not trust himself in their hands. 

On the 31st of December, 1584, was concluded a treaty 
called the treaty of Joinville, between the party of the duke 
of Guise and Philip II. of Spain, who took the title of Pro- 
tector of the League. In the following year the war re-com- 
menced with the Protestants This war has been called the 
War of the three Henrys : that is, Henry III. ; the king of 
Navarre ; and the duke of Guise. 

In 1587, the king of Navarre gained a signal victory over 
che royal army at Coutras : but this victory he failed to im- 
prove as he ought. A considerable army of Germans entered 
France for the purpose of supporting the Hugonots, and pene- 
trated into the center of the kingdom. ; but was finally routed, 
and almost exterminated by the duke of Guise. 

In 1588, the Hugonots sustained a great loss in the death 
of the prince of Conde. This prince of Conde was a man of 
great abilities, and of the most strict and sincere integrity, 
and no way inferior to his cousin, the king of Navarre, in 
bravery and generosity of character. He was a Protestant 
from the purest principles of religion, and scorned eveiy selfish 
and unworthy motive. This great man was poisoned by his 
own servants. His wife, Charlotte de Trimouille, was de- 
tained many years in prison on suspicion of having been the 
instigator of the crime. She had one son, who was born a 
few months after the death of his father. 

During these transactions, the king, jealous of the League, 
which daily treated him with increased insolence and tyranny, 
knew not, and had not firmness to determine consistently, 
which way to turn himself Too weak to cope either with 
the king of Navarre or the duke of Guise, he acted an insin- 
cere part toward both, sometimes treating openly with the 
one at the very moment that he was treating secretly with 
the other. Catherine also, as was her custom, acted perfidi 
ously. She had formed a design, in defiance of the law, to 
advance the children of her favorite daughter, the duchess of 
Lorraine, to the succession to the crown. She afiected to 
keep good friends with the king of NavaiTe, while she secretly 
iourted the duke of Guise, in the hope of engaging him to 
favor her scheme. But Guise had still nearer interests of hie 
own to serve, and aimed at procuring for himself, if not the 
crown Itself, yet at least the exercise of all its power. He, 
however, with a dissimulation equal to Catherine's, ajSected 



A U. 1533.] HENRY m. Jiji 

to lend a willing eai to her schemes, while he carefully con- 
cealed his own. 

The king became at length the object of an extreme and 
general distrust and eontempt. The people, the Parisians 
more especially, could not help making disparaging compari- 
sons between him and the duke of Guise, whom they idolized. 
Guise, by means of his agents, fomented the public disaffec- 
tion, and several plots were formed to dethrone the king, and 
confine him in a monastery. One of the most active pro- 
moters of these plots was the duchess de Montpensier, Guise's 
sister, who, to revenge herself for some remarks which Henry 
had made on her want of personal beauty, took every means 
of turning him into ridicule, and lowering his authority. 

These designs against the king becoming daily more foj- 
midable, Henry in terror sent orders to the duke of Guise to 
abstam from coming to Paris. But Guise, his plots being 
ripe, came in defiance of him. . He entered the city, May 9. 
1588. He was received with acclamations of triumphant 
joy by the populace, and welcomed with apparent cordiality 
by Catherine, who undertook to mediate between him and the 
king. Henry was at length prevailed on to admit him into 
his presence. The duke, while he was with the king, kept 
his hand on his sword, and there is every reason to think thai 
Henry had intended to order his guards to fall on him during 
the interview. But he was for the present suffered to retire 
unharmed, after having been loaded by the king with re- 
proaches, to which he replied with apparent submission. 

After another day had passed, the king caused a body of 
four thousand Swiss soldiers to be brought into the city, with 
orders to post themselves in the squares and principal places 
But the citizens, instigated by Guise and his party, assembled 
in prodigious numbers, and overpowering the soldiers, pro- 
ceeded to erect barricades, and to stretch chains across the 
streets, by way of protecting themselves against any attack 
from the king. These barricades v/ere by degrees carried 
farther and farther till they were advanced within a few 
steps of the Louvre. The shops were shut, the alarm-bells 
were rung, and the town, from one end of it to the other, was 
in the greatest tumult. The king himself was every instant 
in expectation of being attacked in his palace. The marechals 
Biron and d'Aumont, who ventured to harangue the mob 
were fired at, and obliged io retire. The duke of Guise, who 
had till now remained in Ins house, a passive spectator of the 
commotion, appeared at this crisis in the streets on horseback, 

Q 



362 HENRY III. [CflAr. XXX 

unarmed, and with only a truncheon in his hand. His voica 
and presence instantly calmed the mob. He forbade tha 
people to commit any violence, and at the same time he 
ordered the barricades to be kept up, and the king to be vigi- 
lantly observed. Catherine endeavored to restore tranquillity 
by negotiating The mob, in the mean time, hourly increased. 
The king, during the night, found means to escape from the 
gardens at the back of the palace, and mounting a horse, took 
the road to Chartres,* leaving Guise almost entire master of 
the capital. Catherine remained behind, and continued her 
negotiations, and at last procured an apparent reconciliation. 
The terms of reconciliation included a promise from the king 
to call an assembly of the states-general. It was the object 
of the duke of Guise to procure from this assembly, which 
met at Blois in the month of October following, a ratification 
of the king's other concessions, and he spared no pains to secure 
its members in his own interests. 

Henry, under these circumstances, determined to rid him- 
self of his ambitious subject by resorting to the detestable act 
of assassination. In the dead of the night of the 22d of De- 
cember, he himself introduced nine of his body guards into 
secret hiding-places, which he had had constructed in the 
passage leading to his own chamber, in the castle of Blois ;t 
and, arming them with poniards, he bade them lie in wait for 
their victim. A public council had been appointed to be held 
in the castle at eight o'clock in the morning of the 23d, and 
Guise had been summoned to attend it. The king's designs 
were known to so many persons, that the duke had that morn- 
ing received no fewer than nine billets, entreating him not to 
attend ; but he disregarded these friendly warnings, and looked 
on them as a contrivance of Henry's to intimidate him, and to 
induce him to leave Blois, where he knew that his presence 
was no longer desired. 

At the appointed hour, Guise, with his brother, the cardinal 
of Guise, entered the council-room. The duke presently re 
ceived a message to attend the king in his private chamber. 
By nature intrepid, he obeyed the summons without fear ; but 
when he approached the door of the royal apartment, he waa 
suddenly beset by the assassins, and, after a desperate but 
short resistance, fell covered with wounds. Henry, from the 
scene of death, went to his mother's apartment, and said ex- 
ultingly, " Now, madam, I am a king I" She neither blamed 
lor approved the deed, but coldly replied, " We shall see what 
* Southwest of Paris. t Southwest of Orleans 



K.B. 1589.] HENRY III. 36* 

will come ol it." She urged him, however, to take instant 
measures to secure Paris, while yet in consternation at the 
first intelUgence of this bloody transaction, and for checking 
the commotions which might be expected to arise throughout 
the kingdom. Catherine was at this time ill, and indeed on 
the very brink of eternity. This miserable woman had no 
comfort in looking forward to what was to her a dreadful 
futurity. She saw the futiHty also of all her worldly schemes, 
and the ruin and misery which they had brought, and which 
they were still bringing, upon her race. The mental agita- 
tion which these reflections excited in her is commonly sup- 
posed to have hastened her end. 

The murder of the duke of Guise entangled Henry, as is 
commonly the case, in other crimes. At the moment when 
Guise was assassinated, his brother, the cardinal, was arrest- 
ed. On the following day, it being thought dangerous that 
he should survive, he, too, was sent for under pretense of 
speaking to the king, and was dispatched by four soldiers, in 
one of the galleries of the castle. That night, the two bodies 
were let down by ropes from the windows into a court, where 
they were burnt to ashes, in order to prevent any remains of 
them from being preserved. 

No sooner was the death of Guise known in Paris than the 
people became almost frantic, and their grief and indignation 
knew no bounds. The doctors of the Sorbonne, whose decrees 
were considered as being almost as binding as laws, pronounced 
Henry of Valois to have forfeited his crovsm, and absolved hia 
subjects from their oath of allegiance. The whole country 
was in a state of alarm and commotion. Whole provinces, 
and nearly all the chief cities revolted ; and Henry, instead of 
" finding himself a king," saw himself on the point of losing 
his crown. Utterly incapable of effecting any thing for him- 
self, he now again turned his eyes to the king of Navarre, and 
besought him to come to him, and to have compassion on hia 
distressed condition. It was with some difficulty, arising part- 
ly from his abhorrence of the king's crimes, and partly from 
suspicions of his sincerity, that this prince could bring himself 
to pay attention to his entreaties. However, for this once he 
suspected him wrongfully. The king had now nc intention 
to injure the only man who could assist him m hiB present 
abject condition. The two Henrys met April 30, 1 589, in 
the park of the castle of Plessis les Tours, and a reconciliation 
took place, which appears to have inspired the king with somo 
degree of courage and energy. He called together all th* 



80« HENRY III. [Chap. XXX 

troops who still adhered to him, and uniting his ibrces with 
those of the king of Navarre, assemhled an army of thirty- 
eight thousand men. With this army the two kings appeal- 
ed before Paris, in the end of July. 

The alarm of the Parisians was excessive. They had not 
expected, and were totally unprepared for a siege. The duke 
d3 Mayenne, the surviving brother of the duke of Guise, who 
Eince his brother's death had been appointed head of the 
League, came to the relief of the capital with all the troopa 
he could nmster. But these were very inadequate to its de- 
fense, and Mayenne meditated the desperate resolution of put- 
ting himself at the head of four thousand of his best men, and 
either cutting his way through the besiegers, or perishing glo- 
riously in the attempt. The fate of Paris had arrived at this 
awful crisis, when an unexpected event averted the destruc- 
tion which seemed impending, and made an entire revolution 
In the affairs of the kingdom. 

On the 1st of August, 1589, a monk named James Clement, 
under pretense of having important communications to make 
to the king, obtained admittance into his chamber while he 
was dressing, and, presenting to him a paper for his perusal, 
almost immediately afterward stabbed him in the body with 
a knife which he had concealed in his .sleeve. Henry wrench- 
ed the knife from the wound, and struck the assassin with it 
in the face. The attendants rushing forward, soon dispatch- 
ed him with their swords, and thus all clew was lost to the 
motives which instigated him ; and it was never known 
whether the deed had proceeded from his own malignant and 
fanatical disposition, or was perpetrated at the suggestion of 
others. Suspicion , therefore, had an ample range, and glanced 
by turns at the king of Spain, the duchess of Montpensier, 
and at all the principal supporters of the League. 

The king's wound did not, at first, appear to be mortal , 
but, in the course of a few hoiirs, his surgeons pronounced, on 
re-examination, that he had not long to live. He sent for the 
king of Navarre, embraced him cordially, declared him his 
successor, and conjured him to renounce the reformed rehgion. 
He then confessed himself with much apparent devotion, and 
expired, August the 2d. He was in the 38th year of his ag?, 
and had reigned fifteen years. He left no children by his 
queen, Louisa of Vaudemont, and in him the house of Valoia 
became extinct. 

The family of Valois sat on the throne of France two hun- 
dred and sixty-one years. Of the thirteen monarcLs of this 



A.r>. 1589.1 



HENRY 111. 



369 



race, it must be said that they were, for the most part, braA'e, 
magnificent, and lovers of the fine arts. They found tha 
kingdom overrun by foreign enemies,- hemmed in and curtail- 
ed on every side,- and parceled out into independent states 
They expelled the English, they united Dauphin e, Burgundy, 
Provence, and Bretagne, to their dominions, and left to theii 
successors a great and well compacted territory. On the oth- 
er hand, these kings were, with few exceptions, arbitrary and 
ambitious, lovers of conquest rather than of the prosperity ol 
their people, on whose rights they trampled imscrupulously. 
They ground down the poor by taxes and impositions, and 
degraded the nobles by bestowing the highest dignities on 
mean and unworthy favorites, a practice unheard of among 
their predecessors. 

In the year 1564, an edict had been pubhshed in France 
fixing the commencement of the year on the first of January, 
instead of beginning it on Easter-day, as had till then been 
the custom. Pope Gregory the Thirteenth's reformation o( 
the calendar Avas adopted in France in 1585. The Protest- 
ant countries of Europe long rejected it, because they rty-ard* 
ed it as a Popish ordinance 




¥alxt awd FooTJi*N or Hsnbt III 



*66 HENRY 111. [Cuip. XXX. 

CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XXX. 

Richard. Of all those thirteen Valois kings, I think I lika 
this Henry III. the least. To be sure he was not worse than 
Louis XI., but, then, he was more contemptible. 

M7'S. MarkJiam. Henry III. was a disgusting mixture of 
fjlly and vice. He was exceedingly vain of his personal ap- 
pearance, and painted his face red and white, and wore some 
kind of plasters at night to improve his complexion. He also 
slept in gloves to make his hands white, and stained his hair 
to hide its natural color, which was red. 

Mary. I thought it was nobody but only very silly wom- 
en indeed who did those sort of things. 

George. I tliink his being so fond of inventing new fash- 
ions in dress was another thing in which he was like a very 
silly woman. 

Mrs. M. He became bald while quite young, which was 
probably the effect of the dye which he used for his hair ; and, 
to conceal his baldness, he latterly wore a Turkish turban. 

Maty. How very strange he must have looked with his 
painted face and his turban I 

Mrs. M. The duke de Sully had an interview with him 
during the time of his greatest distress, and thus describes his 
appearance : — " I found him in his closet, a sword by his side, 
and short cloak on his shoulders, a httle turban on his head, and 
about his neck was hung a basket, in which were two or three 
little dogs, no bigger than my fist." 

George. A basket full of little dogs ! I should as soon 
have expected to have found him playing like a girl, ■wdth a 
doU. 

Mrs. M. He was often found playing with a cup and 
ball : and this amusement soon became so fashionable at court, 
that not only the gentlemen, but also the pages and lackeys, 
were perpetually seen engaged in it. 

Richard. I suppose a foohsh king will make foolish coiu't- 
iers. 

George. I hope there wiU soon be an end of these civil 
wars, and of aU their cruelties- I am getting very tired of 
ihem. 

Mrs, M. Among their many evil consequences, one of the 
worst was their efiect on the minds of all ranks of people, 
whose feelings were made callous by familiarity with scenes 
of blood, and their malignant passions fostered by the violence 
of party spirit, till they seem&i to be insensible to all differ 



'. NX] HENRY III. 367 

eiroe between right and wrong. All writers agree that the 
character of the French people underwent a great change foi 
the worse during the reigns of the three last kings of the 
house of Valois. 

Richard. Pray, mamma, had the soldiers who fought in 
the civil wars regular pay like other soldiers ? 

Mrs. M. They had a nominal pay, but they did not re- 
ceive it very regularly. They were often driven to obtain the 
necessaries of life by the plunder of the peasants, and were, in 
fact, little better than authorized banditti. 

George. It seems to me that the soldiers of old times 
were seldom any thing else. 

MiS. M. It must, indeed, be owned, that whatever may 
be the case now, war and robbery, in former times, went hand- 
in-hand. I have met with an account of the Italian wars, in 
the reign of Henry II., in which it is said that the French 
soldiers acquired by plunder such prodigious wealth, that it 
was no uncommon thing to see the private men clothed in 
velvet and gold. One man's dress is described as of green 
satin, with gold coins for buttons. But in the civil wars all 
this wealth disappeared, and the French soldiery might have 
then passed muster in FalstafF's ragged regiment. We need 
not except even Henry IV., who in a letter to the duke of 
Sully, written in the early part of his reign, complains that 
his shirts were all torn, and that he had not a doublet which 
was not out at the elbows, and that he had not a coat of 
armor which he could wear. 

Richard. Then armor was still worn at that time ? 

Mrs. M. It did not disappear finally till the seventeenth 
century. Xhe offensive arms and defensive armor used in 
France came chiefly from Italy. The French, though in 
many arts, extremely ingemous, have never, from the earliest 
time to the present day, possessed much skill in working in 
iron and steel. 

Ricltard. What fire-arms were in use at tie time of the 
French civil wars ? 

Mrs. M. The arquebuss, which had succeeded to the 
cross-bow, had now in its turn given place to muskets, and 
the cavalry had exchanged their lances for pistols. The mus- 
ket of that day, in consequence of its extreme weight, was 
not brought into use without great opposition. 

George. Did the French excel now in their artillery, as 
much as they did in the time of Charles VIII. ? 

Wis. M During +he civil wars, there appears to havf 



368 HENRY III. [Ohap. XXX 

been on both sides a great deficiency of cannon. At the bat 
tie of Coutras, the king of Navarre laad only three field-pieces, 
and the royal army only two. Queen Elizabeth, in a momenJ 
of generosity, sent the Hugonots a present of nine cannon, 
which were considered a great acquisition. 

Mary. J^.nd I think it was very generous in her. 

Mrs. M. The prince of Conde thought so too, and wished 
much to have made her a handsome present in return ; but 
he was so poor, and his party so much reduced, that nothing 
could be found to send her but some wool, and some bells 
which had been taken from a church in Normandy. 

George. Could not the king of Navarre, too, have found 
something to send ? 

Mrs. M. The king of Navarre was not much richer 
than Conde. It had long been the policy of the family of 
Valois, to depress, as much as they could, the house of Bour- 
bon. And the royal revenues of Navarre, with Henry's 
Bourbon patrimony, and his wife's portion included, did not 
amount to so much as six thousand pounds sterling a year — 
a small sum to maintain an array, and to keep up kingly 
state with. 

George. It was not surprising then that his doublets, poor 
man, were out at the elbows I 

Jiicliard. Pray, mamma, when were regimental uniforms 
first adopted ? 

Mrs. M. During the civil wars of France some distinc- 
tion of dress was adopted by the nobles and officers of each 
party. The Catholics wore crimson jackets and scarfs, and 
the Hugonots white ones ; but this Was a badge of party, 
and not as a military uniform. The first attempt I have 
found mentioned to dress the French soldiers in uniform was 
made by Henry III., who clothed his Swiss guards in suits 
of gray. 

JiicJiard. I fear the arts and sciences were sadly neglect- 
ed during these terrible civil wars. 

Mrs. M. All great public works and general improve- 
ments were at a stand. But so great an impulse had now 
been given to the human mind, that notwithstanding the 
calamities of the times, knowledge of all kinds went on in 
creasing. Among other arts, that of surgery made great 
progress. 

George. Why, the art of surgery was likely enough tc 
thrive in a time of such constant war. 

Mrs. M. Much is sai(^ of the superior skill of Ambrose 



CoNv.j Hr,NRY III. 36i 

Pare, the Hiigonot surgeon, whose hfe was spared by Charles 
IX. at the time of the inassacre of St. Bartholomew. 

Richard. Pare I That was the name of the man who 
first made that happy discovery, of which you told us in the 
History of England, that boiling oil was not good for gun-shot 
wounds. 

Mrs. M. Surgery, before his time, was more a butchery 
t,han a healing art, and the usual way of stopping the blood 
was to sear the wound with red-hot irons. There was one 
man, however, of the name of Doublet, who did not puisue 
so barbarous a method. This man had the reputation of 
curing wounds by magic, and it must be owned that some of 
his cures were very surprising. 

Mary. You are not serious, mamma I He did not really 
cure them by magic ? 

Mrs. M. He used to repeat certain magical incantations, 
after which he washed the wound with plain water, and 
hound it up with clean linen bandages. 

George. It was not fair upon the plain water and the 
p.lean linen that the magic should get all the credit. 

Mrs. M. But there was another way also of stopping the 
bloou -ivithout magic, and without searing the part : this was, 
for some person to hold his thumb on the wound till it should 
cease bleeding. 

George. Then which did they call the patient, mamma, 
the man with the wound, or the man with the thumb ? 

Richard. So much for the art of surgery. And how was 
it in the mean time with the art of poetry ? 

Mrs. M. Jodelle, Desportes, and Ronsard, were poets who 
enlivened this melancholy period. Jodelle was the father of 
French tragedy, and Desportes was famed for his elegies ; but 
it is Ronsard's name which has come down to us with most 
honor. He was the author of the Fratidad, the first French 
epic, and his writings are said to have greatly improved the 
French language, which before his time was very unpolished 
and inharmonious. 

Richard. Is his poetry much admired now ? 
Mrs. M. In England it is scarcely known, and little read, 
I should think, even in France. But there was a time when 
ft formed the universal study of all well-educated persons. It 
was the delight of our queen Elizabeth and her court, and the 
solace of Mary Stuart in her prison. Mary sent Ronsard a 
splendid present of a silver beaufet, on which was a repre- 
sentation of Mount Parnassus, as a tokon of gratitude for the 



370 HENRY III. IChap. XXX 

begUilii'ig of her sorrows, which she had derived from the 
perusal of his poetry. 

RicJmrd. Were there any famous prose writers at that 
time ? 

Mrs. M. The essays of Montaigne are very celehrated 
and I beheve very clever ; and there are a great number ol 
private memoirs, a species of writing in which the French 
particularly excel. One of the most valuable books of this 
kind is the Memoirs of the duke of Sully, the faithful friend 
and virtuous minister of Henry IV. These memoirs give us 
circumstantial and highly interesting details of the chief 
transactions of the reigns of Henry III. and Henry IV. 

George. Were the schools under better discipline now 
than they used to be ? 

Mrs. M. You shall judge for yourself. Here is an ac- 
count by a French gentleman of a school he was at at Tou- 
louse : — " Being in the year 1545 fourteen years old, I was 
sent with my brother to study the laws under the superin: 
tendence of an ancient gentleman. We were auditors during 
three years, leading a much stricter life, and studying more 
severely, than persons of the present time would suppose 
We rose at four in the morning, and having said our prayers, 
began our studies at five, our great books under our arms, 
and our inkstands and candlesticks in our hands. We listen- 
ed to all the lectures till ten without intermission, and then 
dined, after having in haste run over the substance of the 
lectures, which we had taken down in writing. After dinner, 
as a matter of amusement, we read Greek plays, or Demos- 
thenes, &c. At one o'clock, to our studies again. At five, 
home, to repeat and look out in our books for the pas- 
sages cited. Then we supped, and read in Greek and 
Latin. On hoHdays we went to mass and vespers, and dur- 
ing the remainder of the day we had a httle music and 
walking." 

George. Truly, there was no great relaxation of discipline 
there. 

Mrs. M. Among the things worthy to be noted of this 
period is the first introduction of telescopes into France. 
Snuff also was first used in France about this time. It was 
called Queen's Herb, because Catherine de Medicis was ex- 
tremely fond of it, and used to take it. 

George. And for that very reason I never will. 

Mrs. M. I forgot 'A'hen I Avas speaking of Henry the 
Third's capriciousnesf in dress, to say that he left off the 



A.U. 1589.] HENRY IV 371 

large rufis which wero much in fashion when he came to the 
crown. 

Mary. I suppose he thought they misbecame him. 

Mrs. M. He left them off because he took it into his 
head that the person, whose business it was to pin his ruff^ 
had been bribed by his brother, the duke of Alencon, tn 
Bcratch him in the nape of the neck with a poisoned pin. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

HEN^Y IV., SURNAMED THE GREAT 
[Years after Christ, 1580—1610.] 




Henry IV., Ql'een, and Dauphin. 

When the melancholy catastrophe which put an end to 
the troubled and ignominious reign of Henry III. was known 
in Paris, the Parisians abandoned themselves to the most dis- 
graceful excesses of joy. The duchess of Montpensier ran 
about the streets exclaiming, " Good news ! good news ! the 
tyrant is dead I" 

In the mean time all was confusion and consternation in 
the royal camp. There was no nearer male heir than the 
king of Navarre : but still his claim was by many considered 
too remote t!> be admitted as a clear title to the throne, ha 
being related to t^^s late king only in the eleventh degrep 



372 HENRY IV. L^-'h^p- XXX» 

The party of tiie League refused to acknowledge his claim, 
and caused the old cardinal de Bourbon, who was still a pris- 
oner, to be proclaimed king ly the title of Charles X. Tha 
nobles in the royal army were chiefly incluaed to the cause of 
Henry, and, as soon as they had recovered from the surprise 
into which the death of Henry III. had thn wn them, ac- 
knowledged him as king. The duke of Epenion, and some 
others, however, professed to take no part in the contest, and 
withdrew with a large portion of the troops. 

Henry with his diminished forces found it impossible tc 
continue the siege of Paris, and as soon as he had consigned 
the remains of the last of the Valois to a humble grave in 
the church of Compeigne, he broke up his camp and retired 
into Normandy. Thither Mayenne followed, and was de- 
feated by Henry, first at Arques,* and afterward at Ivri.j" 
These victories, though they did much to raise Henry's char- 
acter, and gave hope, and, in some degree confidence, to his 
friends, were yet very far from putting him in possession of the 
kingdom. The party of the League was far more numerous 
than his own, and was held together by the gold and influence 
of the king of Spain, who was desirous to subvert the princi- 
ples of the Salic law, and obtain the crown of France for his 
daughter Clara Isabella, or, as some authors call her Clara 
Eugenia. 

In addition to the difliculties thrown in his way by his en 
ernies, Henry suffered also many embarrassments from his 
i'riends. The Catholics who had joined his party coifld have 
no toleration for tlie Hugonots, who on their part had no cor 
diality for the Catholics. They were each jealous of the 
other, and were always fancying themselves not sufficiently 
valued by the king. Nor had Henry any support from the 
members of his wn family. The young prince of Conde, the 
next heir after him to the crown, was quite a boy, and could 
give him no assistance whatever. The three uncles of Conde 
had neither influence nor abilities, and the only prince of the 
blood who possessed either was the duke de Montpensier, but 
he was lost to the royal cause by the vehement politics of his 
wife. 

Henry thus stood alone, and had to contend unsupported 
with all the burdens of his difficult situation. He was now 
in the thirty-sixth year of his age, and had been tried from 
his earliest years in the hard school of adversity. He wn* 

* Near Dieppe, on the northern coast. 

t On the southoTO frontier of Normandy, south of Diepvo- 



A.D. ii)9C 1 HENEY IV. 37;i 

blessed with a frank and cheerful disnosition, and with gay 
and buoyant spirits. Prompt and vigilant, he was alwaya 
ready to act. He was sparing in his own personal expenses, 
out generous and hberal to others. He possessed in an emi- 
nent degree those truly royal virtues, valor and clemency ; 
and is said to have subdued his enemies as much by the one 
as by the other. He was a man of great sincerity and sim- 
plicity of maimers, and the French found in him what they 
had long been unaccustomed to, a king without artifice oi 
dissimulation. He also possessed another virtue, at this time 
a very rare one, namely, humanity. His compassion and ten- 
derness of heart endeared him particularly to all the lowei 
ranks of the people, who were but little accustomed to receive 
kindness from their superiors. He was not without faults, 
■and those very serious ones, but I will not spoil his portrait 
by naming them now. When circumstances force therrj 
upon our notice, it will be time enough to speak of them. He 
was tall and well made. He had a clear, animated com- 
plexion, well-proportioned features, and an open, engaging 
countenance. 

The duke de Mayenne, who may be considered as Henry's 
chief opponent, was in almost all respects his entire reverse. 
He was slow in all his movements, heavy in his person, a 
great eater and a great sleeper. He took on all occasions a 
long time to deliberate, and though his judgment was goodj 
vet his efforts were commonly unavailing, through his over- 
caution and dilatoriness. He was a bad manager of his af 
fairs, profuse in expense, and always in difficulties. Hi^ 
manners were grave and ungracious, and he owed the consid 
eration in which he was held more to the cause he was en 
gaged in than to any popular attachment to himself 

In 1590 the League lost their phantom of a king, Charles 
X., who died, it should appear, perfectly innocent of any wish 
to supersede the better rights of his nephew. In this year 
Henry, after taking Melun,* and some other places, laid siege 
to Paris. The citizens had made no preparations of any kind, 
and as soon as they were invested by the royal army, and their 
supplies cut off, it was found that they had not sufficient pro- 
vision or ammunition to enable them to stand a siege. But 
nevertheless they were determined not to yield. Dislike of 
the Hugonots seems to have been felt more strongly at Paris 
than any where else, and animated the inhabitants in theif 
oppoaition to Henry. 

• On the Seine, above Paris — tliat is toward *lie southeast 



5/4 HENRY IV [Chap. XXXI 

The governor of Paris was the dake de Nemours, Mayenne's 
half-brother. He was young and inexperienced, but active 
and full of zeal ; and the city was soon put into a good state 
of defense. The breaches in the walls were repaired, a large 
quantity of gunpowder was nanufactured, the people formed 
themselves into companies to learn the use of arms, and every 
family contributed its copper culinary vessels to be converted 
into cannon. 

But all this time their provisions were fast diminishing, and 
at length the calamities of famine began to be severely felt. 
But even when numbers were dying of hunger, a capitulation 
was never thought of. The duchess de Montpensier encour 
aged the citizens by her unceasing exhortations to a persever- 
ing resistance. The pope's legate assured them that they 
would obtain absolution of their sins, and that those who fell 
would inherit the crown of martyrdom in virtue of their steady 
defense of the true faith. The Spanish embassador distribut- 
ed money and provisions, and cheered them with the promise 
of speedy relief. 

Notwithstanding all these efforts, however, the king would 
easily have taken the city by assault, could he have prevailed 
AT.th himself to adopt so violent a measure. " I am," said 
he, " the true father of ray people. I would much rather 
never have Paris, than possess it by the death and ruin of so 
many persons." This clemency saved the city. When it 
was at length reduced to the last distress, and incapable, it is 
said, of holding out more than four days longer, the duke of 
Parma, the greatest general of his age, arrived at the head of 
a considerable Spanish army, and obliged Henry to raise the 
siege. 

On the 30th of August, 1590, the sentinels who had been 
keeping watch all night on the walls, perceived, at break of 
day, that the royal army was decamping. Their cries of joy 
at this unexpected sight were so loud and vehement, that the 
awakened and astonished citizens imagined that some fresh 
calamity had befallen them. But when they were brought 
to comprehend that the siege was raised, they were as if in a 
delirium. Some ciriwded to the ramparts to convince them 
selves that the news was really true ; others rushed out of tha 
gates in quest of provisions ; while others repaired to the 
churches to return thanks to God for their deliverance. 

Henry having in vain endeavored to bring the duke of 
Parma to an engagement, was compelled to disband hii 
forces and to retreat. In the following year he undertook th« 



A.D. 1592.] HENRY IT. 375 

Biege of Rouen. Parma again came to the assifctance of th« . 
League, and obliged him to raise the siege. The united army 
of the duke of Parma, and of the League, was afterward 
hemmed in by the royal forces near Caudebec,* and only 
escaped by crossing the Seine in the dead of the night, May 
20, 1592. The duke of Parma, who had been long ui an 
infirm state of health, died at Arras,t December 3d, of the 
same year. 

The events of this war proved sufficiently to Henry that 
nothing but the renunciation of the Protestant religion could 
possibly fix him firmly on the throne. A sense of honor, per- 
haps, and the fear of alienating the queen of England, had 
weighed more to hinder him from taking that step than any 
real interest which he himself took in the distinctions between 
the Protestant and the Catholic faith. He had before this 
time declared a willingness to listen to the instructions of Ro- 
man CathoUc divines, and probably contemplated the being 
one day reconciled to their church. But an event now oc- 
curred which compelled him to decide without delay. In 
1593, the states-general were assembled, and proceeded so far 
as to ofier the crown to the Spanish Infanta, on the condition 
that she should marry a French Catholic prince. The young 
duke of Guise was fixed on as her future husband. 

Under these circumstances, Henry, on July 25, 1593, made 
a public abjuration of Protestantism. To complete his entire 
reconciliation with the Romish church, there now remained 
nothing but the pope's absolution, for which his embassadors 
at Rome labored earnestly, but for some time unsuccessfully. 
The duke of Mayenne, and some of the stanchest adherents of 
the League, contended that, until Henry had received abso- 
lution, he could not be considered as a legitimate sovereign. 
But notwithstanding this opposition, daily increasing num- 
bers of the nobles flocked to tender him their submission, and 
Henry received them with a frankness and kindness, and with 
a seeming forgetfulness of the past, which served to rivet 
their obedience to his authority. 

Rheims was in the hands of the League, and Henry waa 
therefore crouTied at Chartres,:!: Feb. 27, 1594. A new 
crown and scepter were made for the occasion, the regalia of 
France, among which was the golden crown of the Carlovin 
gians, wliich had long been treasured as a valuable relic, hav 
mg been seized by the duke de Nomours, and melted dowr. ta 

* Near Rouen. Southeast of Cdais, in ArtoJa 

t Southwest of Paris, 48 miles 



876 -lENRY IV. LChap. XXXI 

supply the necessities h the League. On March 22il, Henry 
tvas received into Paris. In 1585 he at length obtained his 
long desired absolution from the pop3. The duke of May enne 
was now deprived of all plea for withholding the submission 
due to his sovereign, Henry concluded a treaty v/ith h;in 
early in the year 1596, and received and treated him with so 
much nobleness and generosity, that he was ever after one of 
his most faithful servants. The remaining members of the 
League followed the example of their leader, and thus France 
at last saw the termination of those troubles with which she 
had been distracted ever since the death of Henry II., a pe- 
riod of thirty-seven years. 

Domestic tranquillity being thus happily restored, the war 
with Spain was comparatively of little importance. The 
archduke Albert, governor of the Low Countries, to whom 
Philip had promised his daughter in marriage, made an in- 
road into France in 1596, and took Calais and Ardres. Henry, 
whose finances were not yet recruited, applied, in this emer- 
gency, to the queen of England. Elizabeth, after making 
some difficulties on account of the displeasure she felt at his 
change of religion, entered into an alliance with him, and sent 
him a supply of troops. In this alliance the Dutch afterward 
joined. 

In 1597, the Spaniards took Amiens ;* but Henry retook it 
after an obstinate siege of six months. During the siege, he 
was often tempted to try a pitched battle, which the arch- 
iuke appeared to seek. But the caution of Mayenne was 
here of signal use in preventing the king from running so 
great a risk. Mayenne said to him, " Sire, you are come 
heie to take Amiens, and not to fight." 

Soon after the re-capture of Amiens, Philip II., who waa 
now old and infirm, and aware that his life and his ambitious 
projects would soon close together, became desirous of peace. 
A treaty was commenced under the pope's mediation, and 
finally concluded at Vervins, in Picardy, May 2, 1598. By 
this treaty, the Spaniards agreed to give up Calais, and, with 
slight exception, all their other conquests in France. In the 
following September Philip II. died, and was succeeded in 
the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal by his only son Philip 
III., a youth of very mean capacity. Franche Comte and the 
Low Countries were settled on Clara Isabella, who married 
the archduke A'lbert. 

* O « the Somme, nearly south of Calais 



A D. 1598.] HENRY IV. • 37/ 

A short time before the conclusion of the peace of Vervins,* 
Henry granted an edict called the edict of Nantes/ in fa vol 
of the Hugonots, by which the exercise of their reiigion was, 
with some slight restrictions, permitted, and by which they 
were made admissible to all places of honor and dignity iy 
the state. These concessions did not satisfy the Hugonots, 
v/ho distrusted the king ever after his charge of religion, and 
who, though now by law admissible into ai^ cilices of the 
state, yet found themselves, in point of fact, almost excluded 
from them. The French in general, however, were delighted 
with their king, and began to feel the happiness of a well- 
organized government. The taxes, it is true, remained as 
high as in the preceding reign, but they were paid without 
murmuring, because the people were persuaded that the rev 
enue was now expended with a strict and honest judgment 
and frugality. But what may be considered as Henry's 
greatest praise was the attention which he paid to the condi- 
tion of the peasantry, whose wants and sufferings had hitherto 
been overlooked by their sovereigns. During an insurrection 
which arose in the beginning of the reign among the peasants 
of Guienne,t the king, instead of sending troops to extermin- 
ate them, as was the customary method of quelling such dis- 
turbances, had their complaints inquired into, and, as far aa 
was possible, redressed. The peasants immediately returned 
to their duty, and became a most attached and loyal portion 
of his subjects. 

Another object of this great king was to promote aits and 
manufactures. The silk trade of Lyons owes to him its birth 
and encouragement. He began many public buildings, and 
finished others which he had found incomplete. Among 
these was the Pont-Neuf. He continued the improvements 
which Charles IX. had commenced at the Louvre ; and also 
made great additions to the Tuileries ; but these palaces were 
not completed till the reign of his grandson, Louis XIV. In 
all that Heniy did, he found a most able assistant in his 
faithful friend and servant Hosny, on whom he conferred the 
title of duke of Sully. Sully, although a Hugonot, was made 
chief minister of finance, and held other important offices in 
the state. He was thoroughly deserving of the king's con- 
fidence, and seems to have had no other object at heart but 
the honor of his royal master and ^he good of his country. 

* In the eastern part of Picardy, east of Amiras. 
t Nantes is near the mouth of the Loire. 
t In tho amthwest p«Jt of France. 



at 



HENRY IV. 



[Chap. XXXi 




Pont-Nkdf and Tour bb Neslk. 

Few characters in history have ever been more popular 
than that of Henry. He is beyond all comparison the favor- 
ite monarch of the French, and merits this distinction by his 
alert spirit and happy temper, and by having possessed all the 
endearing qualities of a kind and frank disposition I wish, 
as I have already told you, that we could cast a vail over his 
vices. But it must not be concealed that he indulged a pas- 
sion for gambling, and licentiousness, m the most disgraceful 
and intemperate degree. 

In, 1599 he obtained a divorce from Margaret of Valois, 
and the same year married Mary de Medicis, niece to the 
grand duke of Tuscany. Mary was a woman of a weak 
mind and violent temper. She was entirely governed by her 
Italian favorites, and her perpetual quarrels with the king 
made the court a continued scene of dissension. These quar- 
rels were cliiefly excited or fomented by Henrietta d'Entragues, 
Marquise de Verneuil, the king's mistress, a woman of a sharp 
and lively wit, who made the queen a perpetual theme of her 
pleasantries. She also attempted to create disturbances m 
the state, and, though her practices were discovered, Henry's 
infatuation waa so great, that the knowledge of her perfidy 
could not estrange him from her. 

A war broke out in 1600 with the duke of Savoy,* which 
was, however, terminated early in the following year, by a traatyr 
* Savoy is south of S^ itzerlaud. 



A.D. 1610.] HENRY IV. 373 

greatly to the honor and advantage of Henry, and which ac- 
quired for the French monarchy sorue accession of territory. 
During several years which followed, and which have been 
called the golden age of France, few public events of any 
moment occurred. That which attracts most interest is the 
unhappy fate of marechal Biron, who, after having been the 
king's faithful servant in his adversities, was now found guilty 
of a treasonable correspondence with the Spanish government. 
He was beheaded July 31, 1602. 

While Bircn was engaged in this treason, the due de Bou- 
illon, one of the great leaders of the Protestants, was seen 
also to meditate an insurrection. But apprehensive of being 
arrested, he quitted France and went to Geneva.* In 1606, 
Henry proposed to reduce by arms the duke's httle principal- 
ity of Sedan, which was situate on the frontier of Flanders ; 
but the town surrendered at the king's approach. Letters of 
pardon were granted to the duke, who, hastening to the king's 
presence, and throwing himself at his feet, was again received 
into favor. 

Historians have dwelt much, and the duke of Sully in par- 
ticular, on a darling project of Henry, to unite all Christendom 
into a sort of Christian republic, in which each state should 
be secured from the aggression of any other, and thus all 
should be at liberty to carry on war against the infidels. In 
this new crusade Henry, I suppose, intended that he himself 
should be appointed generalissimo. He communicated the 
project as early as the year 1601 to his firm friend and ally, 
our queen Elizabeth, who, though she probably thought the 
plan chimerical, was too politic to discountenance it. But 
Henry's immediate object was to reduce the power of thf 
house of Austria, his inveterate, and long his dangerous enemy 
With this end in view, he passed the latter years of his life 
in putting his army into the most efficient condition, and in 
amassing a very considerable treasure. In the spring of 1610 
he prepared to set his forces in motion, on the pretext of some 
disputes with the emperor Rodolph. 

Before his departure for the army, which he intended to 
command in person, the queen demanded to be solemnly 
crowned. Henry was unwilling to grant her request, as well 
on account of the expense it would occasion as the delay which 
it would cause to his departure. Yet he did not like to refuse 
her this gratification. The coronation accordingly took place 
with all becoming splendor, May 13, 1610. Amidst the 
* On the Like of Geneva, near the eastern frontier of Prance. 



380 HENRY IV -lOhap. XXXl. 

general expression d" gayety, the. kiLg alone -wore a face of 
dejection, and seemed to take no pleasure in the passing scene 
This melancholy has been attributed by the superstitious to a 
presentiment of liis approaching fate, though it may naturally 
enough be supposed to have solely arisen from his being vexed 
at the delay of his enterprise. 

It was settled that on the 15th of May the queen was to 
make a grand entry into Paris. The happy citizens were 
busily occupied with their preparations for this pompous cer- 
emony. Triumphal arches were erecting in all the streeta 
through which the procession was to pass, and the whole city 
was a scene of bustle and expectation. All this joyous scene 
was of a sudden painfully interrupted. On May the 14th, 
the day after the coronation, the king went in his coach, at- 
tended by six noblemen, to visit Sully, who was confined ^y 
sickness to his house. On the way the coach was stopped in 
a narrow street by two carts. Instantly a man jumped upon 
the hind wheel of the coach, and plunged a knife into the 
breast of the king, who was reading a letter, and did not even 
see his assassin. Some authors say that the king exclaimed, 
" I am wounded !" others, that he expired instantly with a 
deep-drawn sigh. The noblemen who were in the coach 
closed the leathern curtain, whicli at that time served instead 
of blinds or windows, and ordered the coachman to drive back 
to the Louvre. The carriage might be tracked the whole 
way by the blood which flowed from it. 

On arriving at the palace, the dead body was laid upon a 
bed, and the courtiers assembled in haste and agitation to de- 
liberate on what was to be done. The queen was declared 
regent. The whole transaction passed so rapidly, that at four 
o'clock the king was in good health, and before half-past six 
the queen was established in the regency. 

No sooner was Henry's death known in the city than the 
people ran about the streets in grief and consternation. The 
murderer, whose name was Ravaillac, had been seized as he 
was still standing on the wheel, brandishing his laiife, as if in 
triumph. He appeared to be a bewildered fanatic, whose 
only motive for committing the crime was bigotry. He prob- 
ably thought that Henry's preparations against Spain and the 
emperor would operate to the disadvantage of the Catholic faith. 

The king's life had been attempted several times before ; 
and once, in 1594, he was actually wounded in the mouth by 
a young man named James Chatel. In consequence of a sus- 
picion that Chatel had been instigated to this cripae by soma 



CoNVJ HENRY IV. 381 

Jesuits, the order of the Jesuits was banished from France, 
but was afterward recalled in 1G03. Henry died May 14, 
1610, in the fifty-seventh year of his age, and the twenty 
Eecond of his reign. He had no children by his first wife, 
Margaret of Valois. By his second wife, Mary of Medicis, 
he had two sons and three daughters. 

(1.) Louis, who succeeded his father. (2.) Gaston, duke 
Df Orleans. (3.) Elizabeth, married Philip IV. of Spain. 
(4.) Christiana, married the prince of Piedmont. (5.) Henri- 
"•tta Maria, married Charles I. of England. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XXXI 

Mary. What a grief it must have been to that good duke 
of Sully, when his dear master, king Henry, was killed ! 

Mrs. Markhmn. You shall have the account of his af- 
fliction in his own words. " In the cruel heart-sinking the 
news of the king my dear master's murder threw me into, it 
occurred to me that although the wound might be mortal, 
there yet might remain some small sparks of life. My mind 
greedily snatched at this faint glimpse of hope and consolation. 
I called to those about me to bring me my clothes and my 
boots ; to saddle some good horses, and that all my people 
should hold themselves in readiness to accompany me. I had 
at that moment only two or three of my servants near me. 
The rest of my people believing that my illness would prevent 
me from stirring abroad, and even from dressing myself, had 
dispersed themselves difierent ways ; but the news of the 
king's woxmd brought them all back ; and by the time I had 
got on horseback, I had, including them and other persons 
who were attached to me, a train of a hundred horsemen. 
The consternation and public grief were a proof how tenderly 
this prince was beloved in his capital. It was very touching 
to see in how many difierent ways the people of this great city 
expressed their affection and their regrets : the groans, the 
tears, the mournful silence, the doleful cries, the arms raised 
toward heaven, the hands clasped together. This was the 
spectacle which every where presented itself to my view. 
Some persons who met me, with grief-stricken countenances 
exclaimed : ' Ah, sir, we are lost : our good king is dead I' " 

Mary. And what did Sully do when he found that the 
king was really dead ? 

Mrs. M. He turned about an ' returned homo, where. 



882 HENRY IV. [Chap XXXI. 

overcome V(ith grief and fatigue, he took to his bed. The 
next day, at the pressing instances of the queen, he repaired 
to the Louvre. " When I found myself," says he, "in the 
presence of the queen, the little fortitude with which I had 
armed myself entirely forsook me, and I abandoned myself to 
sobs and tears. She, also, no longer maintained that firmnesa 
with v/hich she had prepared to receive me. She had the 
young king brought in, whose caresses and embraces were a 
new trial, under which my heart had well nigh sunk. I do 
not remember what that young prince said to me, nor what I 
said to him. I only know that they had some difSculty in 
tearing him from my arms, I held him so tightly clasped." 

Richard. Did Sully, like his master, change his religion ? 

Mr?,. M. No ; he always remained a Hugonot. The 
pope labored hard to prevail with him to turn Catholic, but 
Sully's answer was, " that he would never cease to pray for 
the conversion of his holiness." Sully was a grave, dignified 
personage, and kept up such a solemn state in his family, that 
it almost resembled the court of a sovereign. 

George. Where did he live ? 

Mrs. M. His favorite residence was at Villebon, about 
twenty leagues from Paris. Here he was surrounded by such 
a host of attendants, that on some occasion, when above eighty 
of them were ill, their absence was scarcely perceived. 

Mary. What could he find for such a tribe of people to do ? 

Mrs. M. In the first place he had his four secretaries ; 
then he had his Svidss guard : the duchess had her maids of 
honor. But the easiest way to make you comprehend the 
style of things at Villebon, will be to describe to you the 
manner of life the duke led there, after his retirement from 
public afl^airs. " The duke rose early. After his prayers he 
set himself to work with his secretaries. Their occupation 
consisted in arranging his papers, in looldng over and correct- 
ing his memoirs, in answering letters, and in various other 
matters of business. Thus he passed the whole morning till 
an hour before dinner, when he went out to take the air. 
Then was rung the great bell on the bridge, to give notice 
that the duke was going to walk. At the sound of the bell, 
almost all the household assembled in his apartment, and ar- 
ranged themselves in a file. The duke then issued forth 
preceded by his esquires, his gentlemen, and his ofiicers, headecl 
by two Swiss bearing their halberds. Some one of his family 
walked by his side, with whom he conversed, and he was foi< 
lowed by a train of officers and soldierg.' 



3ui>;v.J HENRY IV. 383 

Mary. O dear, mamma! and all that lusa just to take a 
little walk ! 

Mrs. M. " This solemn walk being ended, the duke en- 
tered the eating-room, which was a vast apartment hung with 
pictures representing the most memorable actions of his own 
life and of that of his royal master. In this room stood a 
table as long as the table of a refectory. At the top were 
two arm-chairs for the duke and duchess. All their sons and 
daughters, whether married or single, were seated on little 
stools. Such in those days was the subordination of children 
to their parents. They did not even venture to sit down in 
their p-resence Avithout permission. As soon as dinner was 
over, at which there would frequently be many guests, the 
company rose and went into another room, where, after a 
short time, the duke would leave them, and return to work 
with his secretaries, till it was time to take his afternoon walk." 

Mary. I hope that this time he went without all that 
train of people. 

Mrs. M. The formalities of the afternoon walk were pre- 
cisely like those of the morning. After a few turns the duke 
would commonly go through a little covered walk ■which di- 
vided the flower and kitchen gardens ; then up a flight of 
stone steps into a grand alley of lime-trees. There he would 
place himself on a little bench, and leaning his two elbows on 
a sort of summer-house window, would enjoy the view of a 
beautiful terrace below, of a large pond, of his park, and of a 
fine distant country beyond. 

Gecn'ge. I should like well enough to have septj? that gar- 
den, though I should not have liked that Swiss guard. 

Mrs. M. The French were at this time beginning to take 
gxeat pleasure in embellishing their gardens, which were usu- 
ally laid out in terraces, alleys, and straight rows of trees, and 
were full of busts, urns, and statues. 

Richard. Were the houses at that time as much decorat- 
ed as the gardens ? 

Mrs. M. The chief splendor of great houses consisted in 
the beauty of the tapestry, carpets, and bed-hangings. In all 
other respects there was a wretched deficiency of what we 
should call furniture. Excepting one or two arm-chairs for 
the heads of the family, the apartments usually contained 
only one coarse, long table, some stools, a few bencheS; ar.d 
several chests or coffers, which also served as soats. 

Mary. It would seem very strange in these days to see 
such a mixture of fine hangings and shabby furnitu'-c 



884 HENEY IV. LCuAP. XXXI 

Mrs. M. When, the constable Montmorenci was killed^ ia 
the reign of Charles IX., he was brought to his own house 
End lay in state in a hall, the walls of whici were hung with 
crimson, velvet, bordered with pearls. The pillows of tne bed 
on. which he was laid W3re cover sd with gold tissue, and the 
quilt was of cloth of gold bordered with ermine, and was thii-ty 
yards square. 

George. I hope they did not put living men under sucb a 
load of quilt. Can you tell us, mamma, any thing about the 
houses of the middle class of people at this time ? They, J 
suppose, did not hang their rooms with velvet and pearls. 

Mrs. M. The walls of many houses were at this time 
wainscoted in panels. A fashion of covering them with gilt 
leather was also in vogue. I have met with an account of a 
French country-house, of the sixteenth century, which gives 
the following description of the principal, perhaps the only, 
sitting-room. " This hall was very large. At one end were 
a stag's antlers, which were placed there for the purpose of 
hanging up hats, caps, dog-couples, and the chaplet of pater- 
nosters. At the opposite end of the hall were bows and ar- 
rows, targets, swords, halberds, pikes, and cross-bows. In the 
great window were three harquebusses, with a variety of nets, 
and other apparatus for rural sports. In the coffers were coats 
of mail laid up in bran, to prevent their getting rusty. Under 
the benches was a plentiful provision of clean straw for the 
dogs to lie on." 

Mary. My dear mamma, how uncomfortable you would 
have been in such a littery place I 

Mrs. M. But amidst aU this litter there were two shelves, 
on which were ranged the Bible, Ogier the Dane, the Shep- 
herd's Calendar, the Golden Legend, and the Romance of the 
Rose. 

Richurd. So I see the Romance of the Rose was not yet 
out of fashion. Well, I am glad there were a few books to 
raake amends for all the rest ! 

George. Were there any great writers in the reign oi 
Henry IV. ? 

Mrs. M. The greatest writer of this period was James 
A-Ugustus de Thou. He wrote a long and minute general 
ttistory of the period comprised between the years 1545 and 
1607, a work which stands in veiy high estimation. There 
were in this reign also several writers of memoirs. One of 
the most distinguished of these (after SxiUy) was Theodore 
J'Aubigne. He was a natui'al son of Anthony, king of Na- 



OoNV.] HENKY IV. 38. 

varre, and consequently half-brother to Henry IV. D'Aubigne 
was grandfather of the famous madame de Maintenon, of 
whom I shall have much to say when we come to the reigp 
of Louis XIV. 

Mary. I could not help being angry with the people of 
the League for keeping Paris so long from the king. And 
yet, at the same time, I felt very sorry for the sufferings of 
the poor Parisians. 

Mrs. M. Paris was so cruelly desolated during the siege, 
that when Henry obtained possession of it, he found the 
streets overgrown with grass, the courts of law deserted, many 
of the shops and of the houses of the nobility shut up. The 
suburbs presented a still more melancholy appearance ; for the 
houses having been abandoned by their inhabitants, had been 
used by the neighboring peasantry as places of shelter for their 
cattle. Henry's first care was to restore his capital to its 
former flourishing condition ; and he labored with so much 
success, that when the Spanish embassadors came to. Paris to 
complete the treaty of Vervins, they could not help expressing 
their admiration at the great improvement which had taken 
«lace an the city since they were there in the time of the 
"Ceague. The king replied, " When the master is absent, all 
*Jjings get into disorder ; but when he is returned, his presence 
•Hruaments the house, and all things profit." 

Geoi-ge. I don't know whether all things go wrong when 
^ou and papa are from home, but I know the house always 
wems very dull without you ! 

Richard. Pray, mamma, when were coaches first intro- 
4uced into France ? 

Mrs. M. In the reign of Henry II. For a long time 
ihere were only three coaches in Paris. The queen had one ; 
Diana of Poitiers had another ; and the third belonged to a 
"8orpulent nobleman, who, being too fat to ride on horseback, 
was obliged to be carried in a coach, " like a woman :" for at 
first coaches were entirely appropriated to the ladies, and it 
was considered as very effeminate for a man to be seen in one. 
George. But it seems that in time the gentlemen got the 
better of their prejudices ; for instance, king Henry IV. him- 
self. 

Mrs. M. It is recorded of Hemy that, though he was as bold 
as a lion on horseback, he was more timorous than a woman 
in a coach, and w^ould turn pale if it went the least awiy. 

George. I dare say it was because he was apt to be sicfc 
ai a carriage. I iould not possibly be from fear. 

R 



886 HENRY IV ILSukr XX Xi 

Mrs. M. It was from superstitious feai. An astrologei 
had told him that he should die in a coach. 

Mary. And you see, mamma, it really did come true. 

Mrs. M. It is difficult for even sensible people to avoid 
bemg affected by a reigning folly. The reigning folly of thia 
age vfa.s the belief in soothsayers and astrologers, whom it was 
customary to consult on every occasion ; and amidst their va- 
rious and often contradictory predictions, it would have been 
very odd if some had not now and then come true. 

Richard. When Henry became king of France, did he be- 
come fond of pomp and show, as all the other kings of Franca 
did who went before him ? 

Mrs. M. He was frugal in his own habits, but encour- 
aged his courtiers in expense, from the principle, I believe, of 
benefiting trade and commerce. The expense of dress, in 
particular, was carried at this time to an enormous height. 

Mary. What made it so expensive ? 

Mrs. M. The quantity of gold, silver, and jewels, with 
which it was decorated. Dress was not only costly, but also 
dreadfully heavy. Gabrielle d'Estrees, one of the king's mis- 
tresses, was often, when she was full dressed, so encumbered 
by the weight of her finery, as to be unable to move, or even 
to stand. 

Ridmrd. I hope the gentlemen were too wise to overload 
themselves in this manner. 

Mrs. M. If they were not wiser they were at least stronger, 
and so were the better able to sustain the gorgeous weight of 
their habiliments. We often read of the vain followers of 
the court being brought to ruin by their extravagance in 
dress. The marechal de Bassompierre owns, in his memoirs, 
that he had once a coat trimmed with pearls that cost nine 
hundred pounds. The following is a description of a fine gen- 
tleman's dress in the beginning of the seventeenth century : 
" He was clothed in silver tissue, his shoes were white, as also 
his stockings. His cloak was black, bordered with rich em- 
broidery, and hned with cloth of silver : his bormet was of 
black velvet, and he wore besides a profiision of precious stones. 

George. I hope it never will be the fashion to wear such 
dresses here. 

Mrs. M. Before we dismiss the subject of dress, I ought 
to mention, that in this reign the ruff was superseded by a 
sort of frame made of wire and lace, in which the ladies' 
heads were inclosed, and which, in compliment to the queen, 
was called a Medici. I need not describe it particularly 



OoN^.] HENRY IV. 387 

because you will perceive that in this little drawing sh3 is 
/epresented as wearing one of these Medicis. Masks were 
much worn at this time by men as well as by women. Tney 
were made of black velvet, and used by the ladies when they 
walked or rode, as a preservative of the complexion. Indeed, 
a mask was considered as so necessary a part of the female 
out-door costume, that a lady was thought to be in dishabilla 
if seen without one. 

Mary. And did the gentlemen wear them for the sake ol 
their complexions ? 

Mrs. M. I fear their motives were not always so inno- 
cent. They wore them principally, we are told, to conceal 
their frequenting the gaming-houses. One poor man, indeed^ 
the marechal Montluc, latterly wore a mask to cover the 
horrible disfigurements which he had received from a wound 
with the harquebuss. 

It has, I beheve, in all times and countries, been a point 
of civihty among courtiers to copy any peculiarity in dress 
which the infirmities of the sovereign may make it expedient 
for him to adopt. Hence the swelled feet of our Henry VIII. 
caused the shoes of his courtiers to expand to the width of six 
inches across the toe. You 'have been told how a wound in 
the head of Francis I. brought in short hair, and how another 
in his chin, which he hoped to conceal by letting his beard 
grow introduced the fashion of long beards ; a fashion which 
continued to the reign of Henry IV. In that reign, the chief 
pride of a fine gentleman was in his beard, which was well 
thickened and stiffened with wax, to make it spread out broad 
at the bottom. But the same knife that killed poor Henry 
struck at the root of these much and long-cherished beards, 
which were presently shaved off' in compliment to the smooth 
chin of his young successor. Nothing was left but a pair of 
thin mustaches over the upper lip, and a small pointed lock 
on the chin. 

Richard. I saw in a book lately something about Henry 
the Fourth's cradle. Pray do you know whether it wbs any 
thing so very curious ? 

Mrs. M. It was nothing more than the shell of a tortoise, 
and was long preserved — perhaps is preserved still — in the 
castle of Pau, which was Henry's birth-place. There is an 
other curiosity that perhaps may also still be foiuid there — a 
huge steel two-pronged fork, which was used by him, and 
which was thought at that time, when forks were first intro 
duced, a very refined and delicate invention. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

LOUIS XIII., SURNAMED THE JUST 
[Years after Christ 1610-1643.] 




Gentleman and Lady ooino to Court. 

The young king, who thus succeeded to the throne on the 
horrid event of his father's assassination, was not yet nine 
years old. The parhament, as I have already said, imme- 
diately conferred the regency on his mother, Mary of Medi- 
cis, a woman not less bigoted in her devotion to Rome than 
the former queen-mother of that family. The character of 
Mary, however, is wholly unstained with the imputation of 
any such bloody crimes as those for which Catherine is uni- 
versally execrated. She was entirely under the influence of 
two Florentine adventurers, a man of the name of Concini, 
whom she made marechal d'Ancre, and his wife Leonora de 
Galigai. The rapid and extraordinary elevation of these fa- 
vorites excited almost universal discontent. It is said of Con- 
cini, that to repress the murmurs of the people, by showing 
them what fate they might expect, if they dared to censure 
him, he had several gibbets erected in different parts of Pans. 
Such means as this of stifling the expression of public feeling 
are seldom for the safety of those who adopt them. 



4.D. 1617.] LOUIS XnL 38 J 

On the 3d of October, 1611, died the due de Mayenne. 
His death at this time was accounted a great loss to France, 
He was a man of integrity, and from the time of his reconcil- 
iation to Henry IV. had never embarked in any intrigues of 
Btate ; and it has been thought, that if he had lived he might 
have been able to check the civil dissensions which ensued. 
These dissensions were greatly owing to the ambitious desira 
of some of the princes of the blood, and others of the great 
nobility, to take advantage of the distractions of a new reign, 
and of a feeble minority, to establish their own power and in- 
dependence. The due de Mayenne, on his death-bed, charged 
his son to remain firm in his principles of religion and loyally, 
and only on that condition gave him his blessing. 

One of the first objects of Mary of Medicis and her favor* 
ites, was to unite themselves as closely as possible with the 
court of Spain. In the year 1612 were announced two in- 
tended marriages, the one between the young king Louis XIII. 
and the infanta, Anne of Austria, daughter of the king of 
Spain ; the other, between the princess Elizabeth, the king's 
sister, and the prince of Spain, afterward Philip IV. Theso 
marriages took place by proxy, the one at Burgos in Spain, 
and the other at Bordeaux, on the same day, Oct. 18, 1616, 
and the two princesses were exchanged in the isle of Pheas- 
ants, in the river Bidassoa, in the November following. The 
infanta was then conducted to Bordeaux, and the king, meet- 
ing her on the way, they made together a solemn entry into 
that city. 

In the mean time, the prince of Conde (Henry II.), and 
other princes and nobles, joined with the Protestants in oppo- 
sition to the queen. A war broke out, and the Swiss Prot 
estants in the king's pay quitted the service, and returned 
home, because they would not act against their brethren of the 
Bame religion. These troubles were for a time composed, in 
1617, by the entire downfall of the queen and her party. A 
courtier of the name of de Luynes excited in the mind of the 
king, who was now about sixteen years of age, a jealousy of 
his mother and of her favorites, and proposed to him that Vi- 
try, a captain of the guards, should have the royal authority 
■ to arrest marechal d' Ancre. The king agreed, and Vitry, at 
the head of a body of ruffians, who, it may be suspected, were 
marked out for this employment, because sometliing more than 
a mere arrest was intended, took an opportunity of arresting 
his victim on the bridge of the Louvre, and, on the marechal's 
putting his hand to his sword, had him instantly killed by his 



SgO LOUIS XIII. L<^HAP. XXXIJ 

followers. The king, on being informed o^ this transaction 
by Vitry himself, exclaimed, " I thank you : from this hour I 
am king ;" and made him immediately maiechal of France, 
The body of Concini, which li id been carried off, and buried 
immediately after his death, was that very evening taken out 
of its grave by a mob of footmen and "pages." ■ It was then 
dragged through the streets, and afterward cut in pieces, 
gome of which were hung on the gibbets w^hich he 'had him- 
self erected in order to frighten his enemies. His wife Leonora 
was beheaded by order of the parhament. She was interro- 
gated during her trial, what sorcery she had used to acquire 
her great ascendency over the mind of the queeen. " I have 
used none," she answered, " except that ascendency which 
strong minds have over the weak." The queen-mother her- 
self was exiled to Blois,* from whence she made her escape 
to Angouleme.f Soon after she had an interview with Louis 
at Tours, and came to a sort of accommodation with him. 
The reconciliation, however, did not last long, and she waa 
at one time at actual war with her son. To conclude at 
once all I need say to you of her history, I may here add, 
that she was again reconciled to him, but that a final breach 
ensued in 1630. She fled to Bruxelles in 1631, and after 
many sufferings from neglect and vexation, died at Cologne, 
July 3, 1642. 

On the king's approach to maturity, strong hopes were for 
a time entertained that he would show some portion of his 
father's enei^ of character. But though personally brave, 
and. Like many weak men, often ready to authorize very de- 
cisive and violent measures, he possessed no power of self- 
government and control, and was always, through his whole 
life, a mere puppet played on by the hands of others. 

M. de Luynes first assumed over the young monarch the 
dominion which the Concinis had exercised over the queen. 
De Luynes was a man of a proud and grasping temper, but 
whoUy unequal to restrain the ambition of the princes of the 
blood, and other nobles, who indulged themselves with impu- 
nity in aU sorts of disorders, and even sometimes committed 
hostilities against the crown. De Luynes died December 15, 
1621. It has been observed of the court of France at this 
period, that not any one person of eminence was to be found 
in it, who could properly be entitled a man of honor or worth. 
Pride and baseness, qualities very often united, appeared U 

* On the Loire below Orleans. 

t Near the western coast, northeast of the mouth of the Garcnne. 



fV..D. ]()21. LOUIS XIII. ctgi 

be almost tht ut-iversal characteristic, and the only ability 
which was either possessed or valued, was the ability to cor 
rupt and betray. 

At the death of de Luynes, the celebrated Armand du 
Plessis Richelieu, bishop of Lucjon, and soon afterward created 
cardinal, was rising rapidly into distinction. He was a man 
of great abilities, and of consummate intrigue and artifice. 
He had been first brought forward by the unfortunate Concini, 
and afterward attached himself to the new favorite de Lu}'nes. 
He was for some time about the person of the queen-mother, 
over whom he had great influence. He is said to have per- 
fidiously abandoned her interests, as soon as he saw that he 
could advance his own by forsaking her. At all events, ho 
acquired a greater degree of power than any minister had be- 
fore possessed in France, and from the date of his admission 
into the royal council m 1624, to his death, is to be accounted 
the sole efiicient ruler of France. He reminds us in some 
respects of our own cardinal Wolsey, but was incomparably 
more crafty and artful. He accumulated in his own hands a 
great number of church benefices, but gave his whole atten- 
tion to afikirs of state. He was fond to an extreme of display 
and magnificence, and even assumed the dress and arms of a 
soldier, and the personal direction of military aflairs. The 
cardinal de la Valette, archbishop of Toulouse, followed in 
this respect the example of Richelieu. He commanded some 
troops in Italy, and died with arms in his hands. 

Cardinal Richelieu is generally spoken of with applauso 
and respect by French' historians, as having laid the founda- 
tions of the greatness of the monarchy, and of the glory which 
it acquired in the succeeding reign. He finally extinguished 
the excessive power of the aristocracy, who have never since 
his time been able to contend with the crown. He almost 
wholly suppressed also those religious wars by which the king- 
dom had Veen so long fatally distracted. But this he did by 
depriving *,he Hugonots of their just rights as subjects, rights 
which h \ been guaranteed to them by the most solemn 
treaties. He also depressed that pre-eminence of the house 
of Austria, which the gallant virtues of Francis I. and Henry 
IV. had in vain attempted to overrule. 

Among the Hugonots, as we have seen in Henry the Fourth's 
reign were many nobles of the highest dignity and power 
Thesf>, though they acknowledged the royal title of the sov 
ereign, yet possessed in their own territories the same inde« 
pendence which had been frcm of old the pride of the great 



392 LOUIS XIII JOhav XXXll. 

feudatories Many considerable towns also, particularly iu 
the south and the west of France, were inhabited chiefly by 
Hugonots, and united with those princes as in a common 
cause. The Catholics and the Hugonots were, indeed, very 
nearly balanced, and the cause of the Hugonots would prob- 
ably have been the stronger, if, in this corrupt age many of 
their leaders had not been bought over by the temptations 
which the government threw in their way. Louis, in the 
beginning of his reign, had confirmed the edict of Nantes. 
The prince of Conde was a Catholic, yet in his treaty with 
the Hugonots, bearing date November 27, 1615, he pledged 
himself to insist on the strict observance of that edict ; and 
in a treaty at Loudun, in the beginning of the following year, 
between the king on one side and the prince of Conde on 
the other, the same stipulations were again repeated and en- 
forced. 

All these engagements, however, seemed made only to be 
violated. In 1620 the king marched into Beam, the native 
province and patrimony of H-enry IV., where the inhabitants 
were almost exclusively Hugonots. He there re-established 
the Roman Catholic church, suppressed the privileges of the 
people, and annexed the principality to the crown. The due 
de Ilohan, who was son-in-law of the great due de Sully, and 
his brother the due de Soubise, may be considered as having 
been at this time the chief leaders of the Hugonots. The 
prince of Conde forsook them. The due de Lesdiguieres, one 
of their most powerful chiefs, was not only bought over to 
desert their interests, but was also pretrailed on to abjure the 
Protestant religion. 

In 1621 the king, accompanied by these new alhes, com- 
pelled the due de Soubise, after a most gallant defense, to sur- 
render the fortress of St. Jean d'Angeli. He aftexward laid 
siege to Montauban,* but was repulsed with the loss of some 
of his bravest officers, and was at length compelled to aban- 
don the enterprise. In 1622 Louis marched into Poitou,t for 
the purpose of subduing the due de Soubise, who occupied 
that country with a considerable force. On the aproach of 
the royal army, the due retreated into the isle of Rhe, which 
is separated from the continent by a small arm of the sea, 
fordahle at low water. The king displayed on this occasion 
much intrepidity ; he crossed the sea under cover of the night, 
and stormed the duke's intrenchments. The Hugonots de- 

" On the Tarn, a branch of the Moselle, southeast of Bordeaux. 
* A. province in the western part cf France. 



A.D .625.] LOUIS XIII. 39J 

fendjd themselves without skill or energy, and almosi all of 
thorn were cut to pieces. The duke himself, with a few 
companions, escaped by swimming. Montpellier, which was 
gallantly defended by the due de Rohan, surrendered to the 
royal arms ; but the inhabitants of Rochelle, though their 
town was invested by sea and land, exhibited the greatest 
firmness and constancy. While affairs were in this state, a 
treaty was made at Montpellier,* by which, among other ar- 
ticles, the edict of Nantes was again confirmed, a general am- 
nesty granted, and the privilege conceded to the Hugonots of 
holding ecclesiastical consistories and synods. 

The terms of this treaty, however, were very ill observed ; 
and the Rochellers, enraged at the willful infraction of it on 
the part of Louis, who seemed utterly careless whether he 
gained his objects by open force or by treachery, renewed the 
war in 1625. One of the most remarkable events of this 
short war was, that the duke of Soubise, with a small fleet 
from Rochelle, succeeded in a daring attack on seven of the 
king's ships which lay at Port Louis,t which was then called 
Blavet, a port on the south side of the river Blavet, and op- 
posite to L'Orient. When he was preparing to return, the 
wind suddenly shifted, and for the time cut off his retreat. 
The king's forces in the neighborhood immediately hastened 
to destroy him ; but before their cannon could be brought to 
bear on the ships with any effect, the wind agaiij. changed 
and enabled him to escape with his prizes. 

Peace was again concluded, through the intervention of 
England, by another treaty confirming the edict of Nantes. 
and agreeing to the other just claims of the Rochellers. Louis 
consented also, that the king of England, Charles I., who, hav- 
ing married his sister, Henrietta Maria, was now his brother- 
in-law, should guarantee the articles of the peace. The king 
and his minister, however, evidently agreed to this treaty only 
because they felt at that time a pressing danger on the side of 
Italy, where, in the character of allies of the duke of Savoy, 
they were contending with Spain for the possession of the Val- 
teline. " The ruin of the Hugonots," said the cardinal to thv 
king on this occasion, " may be deferred without shame ; but 
your majesty can not, consistently with your honor, abandon 
the afiair of the Valteline." These disputes were conclude<? 
by a treaty with Spain ; and Spain afterward agreed to joia 
with France for the purpose of efiecting the reduction cj Ro 

* South part of France near the mouth of the E-hor.o 
t Southern coast of Bretagne 



t59i i^bVlS XIII. [Chap. XXXIl 

plielle, and also in an offensive league against England. Thu 
league against England, however, came to nothing. 

The English, meanvi^hile, fitted out a strong armament, 
which, if wisely used or wisely conducted, would probably 
have been amply sufficient to enable the Rochellers to resist 
the dangers which menaced them. Before the preparations 
of Richelieu were completed, a fleet of a hundred sail, having 
on board an army of seven thousand men, was dispatched to 
th<.ir relief, under the command of the duke of Buckingham. 
This fleet appeared before Rochelle on the 20th of July, 165>T , 
but the mayor and principal inhabitants, either being gained 
by the court, or not yet decided to come to extremities with 
their sovereign, refused to allow it admission into the harbor. 
On this, the duke of Buckingham attacked the isle of Rhe, 
though well garrisoned and strongly fortified. He landed his 
meii, and had he immediately urged the attack, and not al- 
lowed Thoiras, the French governor, several days' respite, he 
might probably have reduced the principal fortress on the 
island ; but his negligence and unaccountable delay enabled 
■ihe French to replenish the magazines, and reinforce the gar- 
rison. The English were repulsed in repeated at^.acks, and 
were at length compelled to retreat. Buckingham conducted 
the retreat very unskillfully, and returned to England, after 
losing two-thirds of his land forces. He was universally con 
demned for his rashness and folly, and gained no credit except 
for his personal bravery. 

In the mean time the Rochellers found that their destruc- 
tion was resolved on. After the blockade of the town had 
been carried on for some time, the king joined the army, ac- 
companied by tho cardinal, who himself planned the lines of 
jircunavallation, ai»d superintended other military operations. 
AU communicationci */ere soon cut off" by land, but it was still 
necessary to prevent ihe introducing succors by sea. Riche- 
lieu resolved therefore to block up, if possible, the entrance of 
the harbor, and various floating works were devised for this 
purpose. But they were soon destroyed by the violence of 
the waves, and it was clearly seen that nothing effectual could 
be done unless a solid mole were thrown across the mouth of 
thy harbor. This immense work, a mile in extent, Richelieu 
accordingly undertook and completed. It was so far from the 
city that the besieged could not obstruct him, and it appeared 
strong enough to resist the force of the sea. 

Before this huge mole was quite finished, the English fleet, 
n the 1 1 th of May, 1528, once more ar leared in sight The 



.^.D. 16280 LOUIS XIII. 394 

Rochellers crowded to their ramparts with the oxpeotaticii of 
immediate rehef : but the earl of Denbigh, who commanded 
the fleet, is thought to have been guilty either of treachery or 
of cowardice. He made no attempt to destroy the mole, and 
after throwing into the city a scanty supply of corn, declined 
an engagement and returned to Portsmouth. To efface this 
dishonor, the duke of Buckingham determined to resume the 
command in person. In the preceding summer, during hia 
distressed condition in the isle of Rhe, he had. himself received 
from Hochelle reinforcements both of men and of provisions. 
The besieged themselves were now in the greatest necessity, 
and nothing could exceed the general desire among the English 
to afixjrd them the readiest and most effective assistance. But 
the duke of Buckingham, while hastening the preparations for 
his departure, was assassinated at Portsmouth ; and the sail- 
ing of the armament was suspended by his death. 

The inhabitants of itochelle were now reduced to the ex 
tremest misery of famine. The greater part of them, notwith 
standing, still preserved their courage. The strenuous exhort- 
ations of some of their clergy, the determination of the mayor, 
and the exhortations and example of the duchess of Rohan 
and her daughter, who ate no other food during three months 
than horseflesh, with four or five ounces of bread a day, en 
couraged them to wait for the succors which were still prom 
ised from England. The command which had been held by 
Buckingham, was given on his death to the earl of Lindsey, 
who appeared oft" Rochelle on the 28th of September. He 
made some feeble and spiritless attempts to break through the 
mole, and force an entrance into the harbor. Then, after a- 
fruitless cannonade, he gave up all hope of success, and 
steered back to England. The last spark of the enthusiasm 
which had so long inspired the miserable inhabitants of the 
1 city expired when he gave the signal of his retreat. While 
yet his sails were in sight, they consented to surrender, almost 
at discretion : and some idea may be formed of the miseries 
they had endured, from the account given us by cotemporary 
writers, that of fifteen thousand persons who were in the city 
when the siege commenced, only four thousand survived "iho 
fatal effects of famine, fatigue, and the sword. 

On the 30th of October the French troops entered the city. 
The deplorable situation to which the place was reduced ex ■ 
cited sentiments of horror and compassion in all who witnessed 
the dismal scene. The streets and houses were infected with 
putrid bodies. The '.nhabitants, who were more like skeletons 



396 LOUIS XIII. [Chap XXKU 

than living beings, had toward the end of the siege become eo 
weak as to be unable to bury their dead. A mouthful of 
bread was the most acceptable present that could be made ta 
the survivors ; but to many it proved fatal, from the avidity 
with which they swallowed it. The king entered the city on 
the 1st of November ; and it is a remarkable sequel of thi's 
melancholy relation, that on the very next day a violent stonn 
arose, which raged for six days with unabated violence, and 
on the seventh buried in the waves that fatal mole which had 
been erected with so much labor, and to which the E,ochellera 
owed their rimi. 

The fortifications of the town were destroyed, and its privi- 
leges abolished ; but the king and Iris minister, satisfied with 
having broken the power of the Hugonots, and having wrrested 
from them this their strongest asylum, still permitted them 
the free exercise of their religion. In the following year, 
Nismes * and Montauban,t and other cities professing the 
principles of the Reformed churches, also surrendered. The 
Hugonots have ever since been at the mercy of the crown, ana 
you will see in the next reign that another signal blow of the 
most relentless persecution and tyranny still remained to b^ 
inflicted on them. 

Durmg the rest of tliis reign, the chief object of the French 
government was to repress, both in Germany, Spain, and 
Italy, the power of its great rival the house of Austria. 
Direct hostilities began in 1635. In 1636 a Spanish army 
on the side of the Pyrenees made itself master of the town of . 
St. Jean de Luz, On the side of Flanders, a stdl more con- 
.siderable force of the same nation invaded Picardy,:j: occupied 
Capelle and Catelet, passed the Somme in defiance of the 
French troops under the command of the count de Soissons, 
and in less than a week reduced the strong town of Corbie. § 
The Parisians were in consternation at this approach of their 
foes ; the sovereign himself desponded, and was silent : but 
Richeheu displayed great courage and magnanimity. He 
dismissed his guards ; he called on the wealthy to send their 
horses and servants, and on the poorei* classes to give their 
personal services. Fifty thousand men were assembled 
by these exertions, and were placed under the command 
of the count de Soissons, and the due d' Orleans, the king's 

* Near the moutli of the Rhone. 

t On the Tarn, a branch of the Garonno. 

t In the northern part of France. 

$ On tho Somrae, west of Amiens. 



A.D. 1642.1 LOUIS Xlil. S51 

brother, who retaok Corbie, and compelled the Spaniards tc 
retreat. 

The due d'Orleans had heen for a considerable time undei 
the king's displeasure. He had fled from court in 1631, and 
married for his second wife Margaret, sister of the duke of 
Lorraine, who had on this occasion given him shelter and 
protection. This protection of the due d'Orleans Louis re- 
venged on the duke of Lorraine, invaded his dominions, and 
compelled him to surrender his capital. The duke endeavored 
to preserve his territories from devastation by resigning the 
possession of them to his brother Nicholas Francis. But this 
scheme failed, and the whole duchy was subjugated. The 
duke of Orleans, discouraged by the fate of his brother-in-law . 
and ally, concluded a treaty of reconciliation with Louis, and 
was now, as you have been told, one of the generals of the 
army which was employed against the Spaniards in Picardy. 

Both the duke of Orleans and the count of Soissons were 
inveterately hostile to Richelieu, and in 1636 concerted to 
assassinate him on his leaving the council chamber. The duko 
of Orleans was to give the signal ; but his resolution forsook 
him, and he declared that his conscience would not permit 
him to shed the blood of a cardinal, an archbishop, and a 
priest. The minister did not learn his danger till it was 
passed. The conspirators took refuge in flight, but a recon- 
ciliation was soon made with the duke of Orleans. The count 
of Soissons was received into Sedan by the duke of Bouillon, 
who, presuming on his near vicuiity to Flanders, was always 
calculating that Spain would assist him against France, and 
was always pledging, and always breaking his faith. In an 
action with Louis's forces under marechal Chatillon, the 
count was killed by a random shot in 1641, and in the fol- 
lowing year the duke his protector, after passing through va 
rious fortunes, was compelled to cede finally his principality 
of Sedan. Li 1641 the duke of Orleans again conspired the 
death of Richelieu, and on this occasion, though his own life 
was spared, his associates were put to death. 

Of the other complicated transactions of this war with 
Spain, which was extended over a very wide frontier, it is 
impossible for me here to give a distinct summary. On the 
whole the French acquired a progressive superiority, but did 
not make on the enemy's territory any very deep or decisive 
impression. The dachy of Savoy was one chief scene of tha 
contest. 

Tn the year 1642 the chief efforts of the French weff'* car- 



398 LOUIS XIII. [CiiAP. XXXIl 

ried into RouslUon, in order to aid a revolt which the inha1> 
t:ants of Catalonia had made against Spain. Louis himself 
conducted his army into that quart'ir, and undertook the siege 
of Perpignan. Richelieu, who was to have accompanied 
him, was compelled by illness to stop at Narbonne. Louis 
returned to Paris, where he was again joinrjd by the cardinal, 
who, after lingering some time, died December 4, 1642, leav- 
ing many of his vast designs incomplete, and a name more 
brilliant than beloved or honored. 

Perpignan had in the mean time fallen before the French 
arms, and the war was prosecuted with vigor and success. 
But it was the fate of Louis soon to rejoin his ambitious min- 
. Jeter in that solitary mansion where neither greatness nor 
f^lory, unless purchased by truly virtuous exertions, is permit- 
ted to follow the short career of human life. A slow fever 
hung on him, and he felt his strength decay. 

The dauphin was at this time not five years old, and the 
king, in the hope to secure a tranquil minority, endeavored to 
provide for the distribution of his power in a manner which 
should attain this end effectually. He appointed the queen, 
Aime of Austria, sole regent. The duke of Orleans was de- 
clared head of the council, and lieutenant-general throughout 
the kingdom; and it was also provided that all affairs should 
be decided by a majority of voices in council. Both the queen 
and the duke of Orleans solemnly swore to adhere inviolably 
to this arrangement ; and Louis, to secure stiU more certainly 
its fulfillment, commanded the deed enacting it to be registered 
in parliament. 

This being done, he prepared for death with composure. 
Before he died, he earnestly desired his physician to tell him 
exactly how long he had to hve ; and when he was told that 
he could not live more than two or three hours, he testified 
the greatest satisfaction, and added, " Well, my God I I con- 
sent with all my heart." He died May 14, 1643, in the 
forty-second year of his age, and on the day on which he com- 
pleted the thirty-third of his reign. 

He married Anne, of Austria, who died in 1666. 

By her he had two sons : — 

(1.) Ltflis XIV. (2.) Philip, duke of Anjou, afterward 
duke of Orleans, who married Henrietta, daughter of Charles I. 
of England, by whom he had two daughters, who lived to 
grow up ; of whom the one married Charles 11. king of Spain, 
and the other Victor Amadeus, duke of Savoy. Their raothet 
Henrietta died in 1670 



toNV.J LOUIS XIII. 69a 

Philip married, secondly, Charlotte, daughter of the Electoi 
Palatine, by whom, he had Philip, duke of Orleans, who b«« 
came regent of France during the minority of Louis XV. 




Gaston, Dukk of ORLEANr. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XXXIl. 

Kichard. Instead of the reign of Louis XIII., this ought 
JO he called the reign of cardinal Richelieu. 

Mai'y. Did he rise by liis abilities, like. that good duke of 
Sully, or only by cunning ? 

Mrs. MarMiam. By both together. He had a very ex- 
tensive grasp of mind, and being unrestrained by principle, 
he never rejected any project, however vast, or any artifice, 
however mean, by which he could attain liis ends. Indeed 
he said of himself, " I dare not undertake any thing till I 
have thoroughly weighed it ; but when once I have made my 
determination, I go to my end : I overturn all ; I mow down 
all ; nothing stops me ; and, in fine, I coAjer all with my car- 
dinal's robe." 

George. How did he first get into favor ? 

Mrs. M. He began his career as almoner to Mary de Me- 
dicis, and courted her favor as long as it could be of use to 
liim. But when he found his influence sufficiently established 
not to require any longer the queen's support, he turned upon 
his benefactress, and never rested till he had driven her into 



400 LOUIS Xllt.. I Chap. XX.XH 

banisliment. He at length, assumed a deportment almost re- 
gal, and the idng's name was in a manner lost in that of 
Richelieu. To raise the glory of France, and his own glorj'-, 
formed in his mind one and the same object, and to the attain- 
ment of this object he steadily directed all his powers. Ha 
filled the country with the splendid monuments of his mag- 
nificence ; he overawed the caballing courtiers ; and extending 
his influence beyond the frontiers of France, depressed the 
power of the house of Austria, and kept all the potentates of 
Europe in check. 

George. But why would those potentates let him ? 

Mrs. M. There was at that time none who could pretend 
to cope with him. The race of the English Plantagenets and 
Tudors was extinct. Charles I., though a man of a refined 
understanding, had no enlargement of mind that could enable 
him to grapple ■with such a statesman as Richelieu ; and in- 
deed he soon became entangled with too many troubles at 
home to be able or inclined to interfere with foreign politics. 
In Spain also there was no Ferdinand or Charles V. Philip 
III. and his son Philip IV. were weak men, and the emperor 
of Germany was in no respect their superior. 

Richard. What were those monuments of Richelieu's 
magnificence which you spoke of ? 

Mrs. M. One of them was the Palais Royal, which ho 
built for his own residence, and called the Palais Cardinal ; 
another is the church of the Sorbonne, founded in the reign of 
Louis IX., but rebuilt by Richelieu, whose own tomb, one of 
the finest works of Giradon, a great French sculptor, is placed 
in it. We may also reckon among the monuments of this 
great statesman the Garden of Plants, which, though it bore 
the name of the king, was in fact the work of Richelieu. 

Richard. Is that the famous garden in Paris, of which I 
have heard so much, where there are ail sorts of curious plants, 
and museums of natural curiosities, and a large menagerie ot 
wild beasts ; where instead of being shut up in close dens they 
are allowed fresh air, and something like liberty ? 

Mrs. M. It is the same, and the whole forms a very com 
plete collection of all that is beautiful and curious in the ani- 
mal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms. But to return to 
Richelieu, of whom having spoken as a minister, I must now 
say something as a poet and a writer of plays. 

Mary. A writer of plays, mamma ! W^hy that is the lasi 
thing I should expect of a great minister. ' 

Mrs. M. And yet Richelieu was much more vain of hu 



CoNT.] LOUIS XIII. 40J 

talents as a poet and a play writer, wliich were veiy indiller- 
ent, than of his talents, which were very great, as a politician. 
Not indeed that he could be said to be wanting in vanity of 
any sort. He was an absolute slave to vanity, and loved flat- 
tery and adulation to such an excess, that they were almofit 
as necessary to him as his daily food. 

George. If a prime minister loves flattery, I dare say ho 
may always be very sure of getting enough of it. 

Mrs. M. Richelieu was not only greedy, of the praises of 
his cotemporaries, but he was also covetous of posthumous 
fame. On all the magnificent public buildings erected b^ 
him, his ov*ti name is conspicuously placed, and his great in- 
ducement to encourage men of letters was, that liis own famt 
might be immortalized by their pens. In one way or another 
he has succeeded very well. Peter the Great, on seeing hia 
monument in the Sorbonne, exclaimed, " I would give half 
my dominions for one Richelieu, to teach me to govern the 
other." 

Mary. When Richelieu went to the wars, did he go in his 
cardinal's dress ? 

Mrs. M. On those occasions he laid aside the priest, and 
"wholly assumed the warrior. He took the title of Generalis- 
simo of the French armies, and appeared in the jtniddle of the 
troops, mounted on a superb charger, with a pjuraed hat on 
his head, a sword by his side, a coat embroideiid with gold, 
and a cuirass. 

Richard. I should suppose he was the last instance of a 
priestly warrior. 

Mrs. M. Not the very last. There is a sti ry of a clergy- 
man in Ireland, who rendered good service to on/ William III. 
The king wished to reward him by giving hiin a bishopric. 
The ministers, however, made it an objection th^it he had borne 
arms. The king, therefore, since he could n(.t make him a 
bishop, compromised the affair by making him a colonel. I 
have heard also of an English clergyman, whw commanded a 
gun-boat at the battle of Copenhagen in 1801. 

Mary. Was the wearing feathers in his hat the particular 
fancy of this cardinal, or were they worn also by other people ? 

Mrs. M. Richelieu was not peculiar in that respect. A 
Jine gentleman of this time was nothing without his panache 
or plume of feathers. The rest of the attire of a well-dressed 
man of this period is thus described : — " He was clad in a 
velvet OT tafiBty mantle, thrown carelessly over his shoulder. 
He wore white boDts with a large pair of spurs. In his hand 



402 LOUIS XIL [Chap. XXX14 

he carried a little switch, with which he incessantly lifted up 
/lis mustaches, that fell over the comers of his mouth, whilo 
with the other hand he smoothed down the little pointed heard 
on his chin." 

George. Upon my word, that gentleman's fingers were 
kept in constant employment. 

Mary. And now, mamma, will you tell us what the ladies 
were like ? 

Mrs. M. They were more like moving tubs than any thing 
else. R-ound hoops, stuffed hips, and all sorts of contrivances 
were resorted to, for the mere purpose, as it should seem, of 
disfiguring the form. 

Ricliard. I have always forgot to ask how Mary de Medi 
cis hehaved to the due de Sully ? 

Mrs. M. She treated him with so much neglect that he 
retired from court, and lived almost entirely on his own estates. 
Louis XIII. once sent for him to court to consult him on some 
important subject. Sully made his appearance in the same 
old-fashioned dress which he had always worn in his late 
master's time. The foolish young courtiers by whom Louis 
was surrounded began to ridicule Sully's dress, his grave ex- 
terior, and his solemnity of maimer. The duke, perceiving 
himself to be the object of their impertinent remarks, said 
gravely to the king, " Sire, I am too old to change my habi- 
tudes needlessly. When the late king your father, of glorious 
memory, did me the honor to enter into conversation with me 
on his great and important afiairs, he always, as a preamble, 
made all the buffoons go out." Louis took the hint, and im- 
mediately ordered the courtiers to leave the room. 

George. That was one of the wisest things Louis XIII. 
ever did, as far as I can find out. 

Mrs. M. Louis, partly from defect of nature, and partly 
from a neglected education, was a man of a very weak and 
contracted mind. He suffered also from the great disadvant- 
age of an impediment in his speech. His pubhc speeches 
were consequently very brief, and those which he was obliged 
to make on the opening of the parliament were generally 
couched in the same words, and to this effect : "I am come 
here on the present occasion. The keeper of the seals will 
leil you my intentions." 

George. In that speech of his, there was certainly no waste 
11 words, 

Richard. Nor an)' attempt to " make the worse appear tha 
tetter reason," whirh I thi' pipa says is a common fault in 



aosr-l LOUIS XI1[. 403 

fine orators. But 1 sujpose that although Louis's education 
was neglected, he was yet taught something. 

Mis. M. He was taught music and painting, and how to 
make little fortresses in the garden of the Tuileries, and hew 
to beat a drum. He was also taught to read, but after he 
became a man he was never known to take up a book. He 
had contracted, it is said, an abhorrence to reading, from 
having been made when a boy to read Fauchet's History of 
France. 

Richard. I hope that will never be the effect of reading 
Mrs. Markham's History of France I 

Mrs. M. I hope not. — The king's detestation of reading 
did not prove any disadvantage to literature. Both the royal 
printing-press and the French Academy were established in 
this reign. The French Mercury is also of the same date 
This was the first periodical work that appeared in France 
It contained a register of public events, and of the acts of the 
go"j»:rnment, together with historical notices of the state ol 
Krope. This publication, which formed an annual volume, 
met with so much success, that the authors of it were led on 
to project and form a register-office of various articles of mer- 
chandise for sale or exchange, and to print and publish adver 
tisei7tents of them. To these advertisements were added af- 
terward articles of political ncAvs ; and a paper was published 
weekly, under the title of Gazette, which may be considered 
as the first newspaper that appeared in France. The first 
number of the Gazette appeared in 1637. 

Richard. Was Paris much increased in size ? 

Mrs. M. It was both enlarged and beautified under the 
powerful influence of Richelieu's magnificent genius. The 
walls were extended on the northwest, and took into their cir- 
cuit the palace and gardens of the Tuileries, which had till 
then been without the city. So many fine churches and other 
public buildings were erected as quite to change the appear- 
ance of the town. 

George. I hope the appearance of the streets was also im- 
proved, and that they were not so dirty as they used to be. 

llrs. M. Dirt and magnificence often go together in 
France. The streets stiAl continued to be sinks of filth, and 
many of them were so narrow that when Henry, due de Guise, 
was a young man, it was one of his amusements to get on the 
roofs of the houses, and jump across the street from one roof 
to another. There was also another inconvenience in the 
streets of Paris, at least to thosa who had to traverse them at 



404 LOUIS XIII. [Chap. XXXU 

ru'glit ; this was their darkness : there were no lamps ; and 
the only attempt at lighting the streets was to place large 
vessels called falots at the corners of the streets, filled with 
burning pitch and other combustibles. When lamps were 
afterward adopted, they were suspended over the middle of 
the street by chains which passed from one side to another. 
These dark, dirty, and narrow streets were the haunts of cut- 
throats and thieves, who frequented them in such numbers 
that it was dangerous to traverse any part of Paris without 
arms, and without a numerous train of attendants. 

George. Were there no constables and thief-takers to keep 
the streets clear of these people ? 

Mrs. M. The pohce of Paris was at that time very inef- 
ficient ; and, what was worse, the greater number of the 
thieves and ruffians, by whom the streets were infested, were 
lackeys and gentlemen's servants. 

Mary. It was a very shameful thing in the gentlemen to 
permit their servants to act in that manner. 

Mi'S. M. It was one of the consequences of the numerous 
train of idle retainers which the fashion of the times obliged 
all noblemen and gentlemen to have about them. These 
people were constantly lounging about the streets, and their 
insolences and vice became intolerable. Nor indeed did their 
masters always set them a good example, if it be true, as we 
are told, that gentlemen were sometimes known to purloin a 
mantle, or snatch a rich citizen's well-filled purse. It was 
then the custom to carry the purse hung from the girdle. 

Hichard. Pray, mamma, is there not some very fam.ous 
Fi'ench poem, which is made on Henry IV. ? 

Mrs. M. You mean, I suppose, the Henriade, which con- 
tains the history of his struggles with the League. It is es- 
teemed the finest epic in the French language. 

George. It is either because I am very stupid, or else that 
I don't know enough of French to find out the beauties ; but 
to say the truth, mamma, French poetry always appears to 
me sad, duU stuff. 

Mrs. M. I forgot, in our yesterday's conversation, to give 
you some account of the equestrian statue of Henry IV., 
which was placed by Mary of Medieis on the Pont-Neuf, 
The horse was the work of a celebrated Italian artist, and 
was sent as a present by Cosmo II., grand duke of Tuscany, 
to his sister Mary of Medieis. It came by sea, and the vessel 
widch brought it was wrecked off the coast of Normandy. 
The horse lay two years covered by the waves. At last i« 



LoNv.] LO JIS XIII. 405 

was weighed up with great difficulty and expense, and was 
brought to Paris, Avhere a bronze statue of Henry was cast 
and placed on it. 

George. If ever I go to Paris I must remember to take 
particular notice of that statue. 

Mrs. M. I am sorry to tell you that the original statue is 
not now in existence. During the Revolution it was broken 
up and melted, and cast into cannon. It has since been re- 
placed by another. Among the decorations which Paris owed 
to Mary of Medicis, I must not omit to speak of the Luxem- 
burg GaUery, a collection of pictures painted by Rubens, the 
great Flemish painter, and which represent an allegorical his- 
tory of Mary's life. 

Mary. An allegorical history in a picture must be some 
thing very curious. 

Mrs. M. It is always, I think, something very unsatis 
factory. I myself dislike exceedingly to see real portrait!! 
mixed with figures of heathen deities, or any other imaginary 
personages. These pictures of Rubens are, I am assured, in 
point of execution, very splendid specimens of art. . It is the 
more to be lamented, therefore, that ths de^^ign is not more 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

LOUIS XIV. 

(part I.) 
[Years after Christ, 1543—1079.] 




Louis XIV., Madame Maintenon, and Philip Duke or OblKars. 

No sooner was the king dead than his will was openly vio 
lated. Anne of Austria, having previously gained over to hei 
interests the duke of Orleans and the Prince of Conde, assem- 
bled the parliament on the 18th of May, and procured a for- 
mal decree which gave her the choice of the council, and in- 
vested her with all real authority. She was herself governed 
in all things by cardinal Mazarin, a native of the little town 
of Piscina in the Abruzzo in Italy, whose political address had 
introduced him to Pvichelieu, and who now became the leading 
minister in France. 

The army in Flanders, at the time of the young king's ao 
cession, was under the command of Louis of Bourbon due 
d'Enghien, son of the prince of Conde, and himself aftei 
ward known in history by the name of " the great Conde."' 
On receiving the news of tlie late Icing's death, this young 
prince, who was only twenty-two years of age, received orders 
not to risk a battle. A battle, however, being necessary for 
the relief of Hocroi, which the Spanjards were besieging witlr 



A..D. 1648] LOUIS XIV 403" 

a larger army than his own, he ventured to disobey these or- 
ders, and on the 19 th of May fought the battle of Rocroi. in 
which he gained a decisive victory. In this battle he charged 
with horse the Spanish infantry, which had been till now 
aeemed invincible, and, after charging three times, broke theii- 
ranks. The count of Fuentes, their commander, perished on 
the field. After this great victory he besieged and took Thi 
onville, and afterward carried the war into Germany. In 
August, 1644, he fought another battle at Friburg, and took 
Phihpsburg and Mentz, and several forts on the Rhine. At 
the end of the campaign he returned to Paris, leaving the 
command of his army to marechal Turenne. Turenne waa 
surprised by the enemy and defeated, May, 1645, at Marien- 
dahl. The due d'Enghien instantly returned to the army, 
and gained another great victory on the 3d of August, at 
Nordlingen. One of the enemy's generals, general Merci, wa3 
among the slain. His body was interred near the field of 
battle ; and on his tomb was engraved the short but express- 
ive inscription : Stop, traveler, you tread upon a hero. 

Meanwhile, in Flanders, the duke of Orleans reduced Grave- 
lines,* Mardyke, and some other towns. On October 10, 
1646, the due d'Enghien made the conquest of the important 
fortress of Dunkirk, which surrendered to him in sight of the 
Spanish army. The due d'Enghien's father died December 
26, and from this time we are to call him prince of Conde. 
In 1647 Mazarin, envious of his glory, detached him into 
Catalonia with too slender a force to allow of his effecting 
there any thing considerable. But in the following year, the 
archduke Leopold having entered Flanders, and recovered 
several of the places which had been reduced in the preceding 
campaigns, it was deemed expedient to send Conde to oppose 
him. The prince took Ypres, and marched to the relief of 
Lens, which, to his great mortification, surrendered in his 
sight. This mortification, however, was soon effaced in the 
decisive battle of Lens which followed, in which the enemy's 
forces were totally destroyed or dispersed. Since the founda- 
tion of the monarchy, the French had never gained so many 
successive victories, nor displayed so much conduct or courage 

The war with the emperor was terminated this year by a 
peace signed at Munster, on the 24th of October, and called 
the peace of Westphalia, in which several important cessions 
were made to France. Peace was also restored between 
Spain and the Dutch Provinces, in which the independence 
* On the coast northeast of Calais. 



408 LOUIS XIV. [Chap. XXXm 

of these provinces was -at last acknowledged, after a contest 
which had lasted fourscore years. Spain was thus at liberty 
to direct her whok force against France ; and in France it- 
self also civil dissensions arose, which facilitated the progresa 
of the Spanish arms. 

The unpopularity of Mazarin was the chief occasion of 
these dissensions. The distress of the finances, which had 
been much increased by the long war, drove that minister to 
attempt to procure money by many unjust and impolitic meth- 
ods. The parliament of Paris refused to register the edicts 
which were issued for the purpose of raising supplies. In. 
consequence of this refusal, one of its members was arrested. 
On this the populace flew to arms, shut up the shops, and 
barricaded the streets. Several affrays, attended with much 
bloodshed, took place. The chancellor was attacked as he 
was going to the parliament for the purpose of annulling its 
decrees. He was obliged to take flight, and several of his 
attendants were killed. His daughter-in-law, the duchess of 
Sully, who was in the carriage with him, received a wound 
in her arm. Sanson, the son of the celebrated geographer 
with whose huge old atlas you have sometimes amused your- 
self, and who was also in the carriage, was mortally wounded. 
This was the . commencement of the distvirbances commonly 
called the Fronde : — from a French verb which means to . 
censure, or browbeat. 

These disturbances were aggravated by the famous cardinal 
de Retz, a man of very bustling and perturbing abilities, and 
of very profligate morals and poHtics, who having been, much 
against his will, placed by his family in the church, was now 
coadjutor to the archbishop of Paris. He appears at first to 
have tried to conciliate the two parties, for the purpose, appa- 
rently, of improving his interest with the court ; but this at- 
tempt failing, he set himself at the head of the Fronde, 
chiefly, it is supposed, through his sheer love of intrigue, and 
the vanity of making himself head of a party, and of exercis- 
mg his skill in artifice and cabal. Nor must I forget to men- 
lion the duchess de Longueville, a lady of a very masculine 
spirit, who was one of the chief promoters of these dissensions. 
The "day of the barricades" was the 26th August, 1648. 
On the following day the barricades were removed, the shops 
re-opened, and affairs, to all appearance, resumed a peaceable 
aspect. 

The queen, however, thinknig Paris no place ol safety, fled 
to St. Germaine en Laye. a,ccoinpanied by her children, by 



A..1). 165J.J LOUIS XIV. . 403 

Rardinal Mazarin, the duke of Orleans, and the prince of 
Conde. Here slie was obliged to pledge the jewels of the 
crown to obtain money. The king himself was often in want 
of necessaries. Most of the court were obliged to sleep upon 
straw, and the pages of the bedchamber were dismissed, from 
absolute inability to supply them with food. Henrietta Maria 
also, the king's aunt, daughter of Henry IV. and wife of 
Charles T. of England, who had fled for refuge to her native 
country, was reduced on this occasion to the extremest 
wretchedness ; and her daughter, afterward duchess of Or- 
leans, is said to have been compelled to lie in bed for want of 
•means to procure a fire. The court, in conformity with that 
cheerful or perhaps flippant humor which has always enabled 
the French to turn misfortune into a subject for pleasantry, 
consoled itself under these vexations by making a jest of the 
Parisians, whose inexpertness in the military art furnished a 
perpetual theme of ridicule. Songs and epigrams were for a 
time a great part of the contest. At last the king's army, 
under the command of the prince of Conde, invested Paris, 
and several conflicts took place. Many of the great nobles 
had joined the Fronde and the parliament ; but scarcely any 
one of them appears to be influenced by any better motive 
than the desire of personal aggrandizement. They joined the 
Fronde that they might be bought ovei by the government, 
either by money or places, or by the hand of some rich heiress ; 
and when they had got what they wanted, were always ready 
to change again. The great Conde was quite as unprincipled 
&s the rest. 

A sort of peace was made in the spring of 1649, and in 
August the court returned to Paris. The intriguing de Retz 
for a time reconciled himself to the court, that he might so 
purchase his elevation to the rank of cardinal, which was soon 
afterward conferred on liim. The prince of Conde became 
discontented, and incurred the displeasure of Mazarin, and 
was imprisoned first at Vincennes, and af"terward at Havre 
In February, 1651, the prince was released, and Mazarin 
sent into exile. Conde returned to Paris, but in the latter 
part of the same year retired into Guienne, of which province 
he was governor, and there set up the standard of revolt 
Mazarin soon afterward returned to court and to power. The 
court was at this time removed to Poitiers, whence it was 
obliged afterward to retreat before Conde, who had been joined 
by a great number of nobles, and who was reinforced also b^ 
a body of troops from Spain. 

S 



110 . LOUIS XIV. icuAP xxxm. 

Marechal Turenne, who after having attached himself tu 
the Fronde, was now come oA'-er to the court party, possessed 
the command of the royal array. Conde, after gaining a vic- 
tory at Blenau, advanced to Paris in the month of April, 
1652. Turenne pursued him, and a severe action, was fought 
in the suburb of St. Antoine, but with little advantage on 
either side. Many tumults and assassinations took place in 
the city, where the great obstacle to the restoration of tho 
royal authority appears to have been the extreme dislike en- 
tertained for Mazarin. This dislike, the king, who had nov 
attained his majority, found it altogether beyond his power te 
overrule, and this obnoxious minister was again sent into exile* 
on the 12th of August, 1652. Immediately after his depart- 
ure, a deputation from the citizens went to the king, and en- 
treated him to return to his capital. This accordingly he did. 
and tranquillity was restored. The duke of Orleans, who in 
this last contest had taken part with the prince of Conde, was 
banished to Blois, where he passed the rest of his life. Car 
dmal de Retz was arrested in the Louvre, and conveyed fronft 
prison to prison ; while the prince of Conde himself, pressed 
by Turenne, and feebly supported by the Spaniards, was re- 
duced to wage on the frontiers of Champagne a petty an() 
unsuccessfiil war. 

Such was the. termination of this war of the Fronde. From 
this time Louis, exercised an undisputed prerogative. Th^ 
country was no longer distracted by faction. The arrogance" 
of the nobles was again reduced within those Hmits which 
the policy of Richeheu had dictated. Arts and architecture, 
and all the splendor of this long reign, date their origin from 
this epoch of restored -domestic tranquillity. But whatever 
advantage the nation may have derived from the happy ter- 
mination of its internal feuds, and whatever share the vigor 
of the king's personal character may have had in producing 
it, I fear that we can not attribute to him any of that true 
glory which a virtuous monarch, more than any other indi- 
vidual, is justly entitled to from the gratitude of mankind. 

One of the king's first acts, after his return to Paris, was 
to recall cardinal Mazarin. The storm was over ; the king 
was master ; and though, only a few months before, the ex- 
pulsion of this minister had been the principal object of the 
civil war, he was now received without the least opposition 
The parliament, which had before set a price on his head, 
sent deputies to compliment him ; and soon after passed sen- 
fonce. ot death on the prince of Conde, whose part it had 



A.D, 1659.J LOUIS XIV. 413 

lately been taking, and whom it had declared the general of 
its forces. 

That prince, fortunately for him, was beyond the reach of 
its jurisdiction. He was now the commander of the Spanish 
forces in the Netherlands. In 1654, in conjunction with the 
archduke, he laid siege to Arras, which was, however, relieved 
by Turenne, who in the following year took Landreci and 
Quesnoi ; and in 1656, though repulsed from Valenciennes, 
laid siege to and took La Capelle. The prince of Conde, in 
these active campaigns, though engaged in the service of the 
enemies of his country, had not lost any thing of his military 
genius. But in Turenne he had a rival who equaled him in 
abilities, and who seemed now to have become the favorite of 
fortune. 

An alliance with Cromwell, which had been concluded in 
1655, gave also a new accession to the power of Louis. To 
purchase this alhance, Louis expelled from the French do- 
minions the exiled princes of the English royal family, who, 
on the downfall of their cause at home, had naturally sought 
refuge in a country of which the reigning king was nephew 
to their mother, Henrietta Maria, and in which their grand- 
father, Henry IV., had been the most popular monarch of his 
race. Cromwell now insisted peremptorily on their expul- 
sion, and to this demand Louis had the meanness to consent. 
On quittmg France, the English princes found an asylum in 
the Spanish territories. 

England and France were thus for a time united. Mai 
dyke and Dunkirk, which had been recovered by Spain during 
the late civil commotions in France, were successively taken 
by Turenne, whose progress Conde vainly opposed. These 
towns were put into the hands of Cromwell, though Louis 
would fain have kept them for himself. Cromwell dying 
poon after, his son Richard became protector, and his title 
was recognized by the court of France. Turenne's career of 
victory still continued in Flanders. After the surrender of 
Dunkirk, he took Furnes and Dixmude, Oudenarde, Menin, 
Gravelines, and Ypres. The arms of France were also suc- 
cessful on the side of Italy ; and in 1659, the court of Spain, 
wearied out by reverses, made overtures of peace, which 
Mazarin gladly accepted. The war was concluded Novembei 
7, 1659, by the treaty of the Pyrenees, in which it "<vas agreed 
that the king of France should marry the infanta, the onlj 
daughter of Philip JV. by his first marriage with Elizabeth. 
sister of Louis XIII. It was farther ag-reed that Louis should? 



4la LOUIS XIV [Chap XXXIII. 

retain j!\lsace and Kousillon, but that he should renounce aL 
right of succession to any part of the Spanish dominions ; that 
he should restore Lorraine to the duke (Charles IV.) ; that 
he should restore to Spain some of the towns taken in Flan- 
ders ; and that he should pardon the prince of Conde's re- 
bellion. 

Charles II. of England implored both of Mazarin, who 
conducted the negotiations on the part of France, and of Don 
Louis de Haro, the Spanish minister, that they would aid to 
replace him on the throne of his ancestors. All his applica- 
tions were coldly rejected, but he was soon actually recalled 
by the English themselves ; and nothing is more probable 
than that if France and Spain had made any attempt to re- 
Blore him by fJrce of arms, they would only have rendered his 
cause hopeless. 

The duke of Orleans, the king's uncle, died at Blois, Feb. 
2, 1660. As he died without sons, the dukedom of Orleans 
was given to Philip, the king's younger brother, who married 
Henrietta, sister of Charles II. of England. On the 9th of 
June, the king's marriage with the infanta took place at St. 
Jean de Luz, on the Spanish frontier. The new queen was 
of a most amiable and estimable character, which she pre- 
served throiigh life ; and though to her the mairiage was not 
a happy one, it is recorded, that at her death, twenty-three 
years afterward, Louis exclaimed that this was the first un- 
easiness which she had ever caused him. 

Cardinal Mazarin died March 9, 1661. On his death, 
Louis, though not yet twenty-three years of age, took the ad- 
ministration of affairs into his own hands. From this time 
to the last moment of his life he was not only the nominal 
but also the real head of the state, and kept all his ministers 
under strict control. He devoted his time to business, with 
unwearied assiduity, and was attentive and methodical in all 
his arrangements. 

He purchased from Charles II. the towns of Dunkirk and 
Mardyke, to the great discontent of the Enghsh nation. He 
improved the port of Dunkirk, and made it an arsenal ; and 
in subsequent wars it has been a nest and shelter for priva- 
teers and other vessels, which have been fitted out to commit 
depredations on English commerce. Lockhart, Charles's 
embassador to France, who had filled the same post there 
ander Cromwell, said that he was treated with far more con* 
*ideration :n Cromwell's time than in Charles's. 

Ill a wai (.vhich followed in the year 1665 between England 



A.l->. 1667.J LOUIS XIV. 413 

and Holland, Louis interfered as the ally of the Dutch but 
this war was remarkable for little else but the hard fig; ting 
which took place between the Dutch and the English fleets, 
and the daring enterprise of the Dutch, who sailed up the 
Thames, and burned the English ships in the Medway. Thia 
war between England and Holland was concluded by the 
treaty of Breda in 1667. 

But another war had broken out, even before this was 
eoncluded. Philip IV. of Spain had died, in 1665, and left 
by his second wife, Maria Anne of Austria, a son, Charlea 
II., the sole male heir of his extensive dominions. By his 
first wife he had one daughter, who was now queen of France ; 
and though in the treaty of the Pyrenees Louis renounced all 
claim in her right, of succeeding to any of the territories of 
the Spanish crown, he now set at naught this solemn renun- 
ciation, and claimed Flanders, Brabant, and Franche Comte, 
The emperor Leopold, though as head of the Austrian family 
he was expressly bound to protect the interests of the infant 
king of Spain, consented that Louis should take possession of 
Flanders, on condition that he himself should be suffered, in 
the event of Charles's death, to annex Spain to his own do- 
minions. It is said that Leopold was so much ashamed di 
this bargain, that he insisted it should be kept a secret from 
all the world, and that there should be only one copy of the 
treaty containing it, and that one kept in a metal chest with 
only two keys — one key for himself, and the other for the king 
of France. 

The French army, with Louis hirnself at its head, the 
skillful Turenne commanding under him, entered Flanders 
in May, 1667. The celebrated Colbert had been minister of 
finance for some years, and had placed more resources in the 
king's hands than had ever been possessed by any former sov- 
ereign. Louvois, minister of war, had made great military 
preparations, particularly by distributing magazines along the 
frontiers — a method of providing for the efficient power of an 
army, which, amid the disorders and the poverty of earlier 
periods, could not be adopted to any considerable extent. 
The young nobility flocked with ardor to carry arms under 
• the immediate eye of their sovereign, and submitted even with 
pride to the strict discipline which he enforced. 

At the head of this army the king took, with little resist 
ance, several tovras in the Netherlands, and excited alarm 
even in Bruxelles itself. In the following year, the prince oi 
(jonde, now again at the head of a French arrav, redv^e: 



il4 LOUIS XIV. LCuAi- XX XIII 

with ease the whole of Franche Comte. England, HoUandj 
and Sweden, however, apprehending that the ambition of the 
youthful monarch menaced danger to the independence of 
Europe, interfered as mediators, and a peace was concluded, 
May 2, 1668, at Aix-la-Chapelle, by which Louis restored 
Franche Comte to Spain, but retained all his acquisitions in 
Flanders. Notwithstanding these acquisitions, he felt great- 
ly indignant at the check given to his ambition by the other 
powers of Europe ; and was particularly ofiended that the 
new republic of the United. Provinces, to which France had 
been till now a steady ally, should have presumed to oppose 
him. His conquests in Flanders gave him an easy access to 
the Dutch frontier, and he determined to take some future' 
opportunity of profiting by this advantage. In truth, he 
made peace only that he might prepare for war with better 
means, and a greater certainty of success. 

One great object was to detach Charles II. from his alli- 
ance with Holland. To effect this he prevailed on Charles's 
sister, the duchess of Orleans, to go to England, and use hei 
influence with her brother, and also to take with her a beau- 
tiful Mademoiselle de Keroualle, by whose charms he hoped 
that Charles might be captivated. These two embassadresses 
succeeded so well, that Charles consented to break his en- 
gagements with the states, and to join with Louis in a new 
war against them. Mademoiselle de Keroualle was after- 
ward made duchess of Portsmouth, and was long the reigning 
favorite of the English court. Louis succeeded also in in- 
ducing the emperor and the king of Sweden, and also the 
tninor neighboring states on the Rhine, either to second, or to 
iriew with indifference, his design to humiliate the power of 
Holland. To this little republic there remained no ally but 
Spain — that very state with wlaich it had contended during 
60 many years for the blessings of liberty and independence. 

In 16''2 the king burst into the Dutch provinces at the 
head of a most formidable and numerous army. He passed 
the Hhine, which, from the dryness of the season, was very 
low. There was nothing very hazardous or difficult in this 
passage ; but it sounded as a great achievement in the ears 
of the Parisi?-ns, and was magnified and panegyrized by the 
wits and poets. 

Louis soon made himself master of the three provinces of 
Gueldres, Overyssel, and Utrecht. Groningen and Frizeland 
were open to him, and there remained to the Dutch scarcely 
any means of opposing him, except in the strength of thos* 



il.D. 167i>.j LOUIS XIV. 415 

fortified towns wliieh still protected the provinces of Holland 
and Zealand. Naerden was taken, a town three leagues from 
Amsterdam ; and it is said that Muyden Avas saved only by 
the singular presence of mind of a woman. Fourteen strag- 
glers of the array having appeared before the gates, the 
magistrates surrendered it, and sent them the keys ; but they 
were kept out of the castle by a female servant, who raised 
the drawbridge, and prevented them from entering. The 
magistrates afterward finding the party so weak, made them 
drunk, and took the keys from them. Muyden is so near to 
Amsterdam that its cannon can play on the ships which enter 
the harbor.* 

In the battle of Solebay, fought on the 7th of June, in 
which De Ruyter commanded the Dutch fleet, and the duke 
of York and the count d'Estrees the combined fleets which 
opposed him, neither side gained any decided advantage. De 
Ruyter, who had been in no less than thirty-two actions, de- 
clared that this was the most obstinate of them all. 

Turenne and Conde urged Louis to follow up his splendid 
success in the eastern provinces by pressing forward against 
Holland and Zealand. To this end it would have been nec- 
essary to dismantle most of the towns already taken, that 
the troops left to garrison them might reunite with the army. 
But the dismantling of them seemed inexpedient to Louvois, 
and was abandoned in consequence of his opposition to it. It 
is thought that otherwise all the provinces must have fallen. 

But they were again destined to be saved, as they had so 
often been before, during the long struggles which they sus- 
tained for their independence. They sent embassadors tc 
entreat pity and forbearance ; but the conditions exacted both 
by Louis and Charles were altogether intolerable even to men 
plunged in despair. They resolved, therefore, to maintain a 
courageous resistance, and with the more hope, because they 
saw kindling in other countries the apprehension that Louis 
would become too dangerous a neighbor if he were permit- 
ted to achieve the conquest of their republic. An insurrec- 
tion of the populace conferred the stadtholdership on the prince 
of Orange. This prince (afterward William III., king of 
England) Avas a man of sound and steady resolution, and bent 
all liis faculties to oppose the power of France. 

* Amsterdam was saved by laying under water the low ground sni- 
rounding the city, and this was done by opening the sluices of the canals, 
which, if the French had kept possession of Muyden, might have bee« 
prevented. 



416 LOJIS XIV [Chap. XXXm 

4.bout Christmas, marechal Luxemburg, who was statici* 
ed at Utrecht, made an attempt to take the Hague by sur 
prise. He marched twelve thousand men over the ice, and 
would probably have succeeded if a thaw had not come on. 
His troops being surrounded by water, were in the greatest 
danger of perishing. They had no other road but the top of 
a narrow dyke, where only four men could march abreast ; 
and a fort was in their way, which, as they were without 
artillery, it seemed impossible for them to take. But fortu- 
nately for them the governor, from excessive cowardice, made 
no kind of resistance ; and the French, who otherwise must 
have inevitably perished, secured by this means their retreat 
to Utrecht. 

In the year 1673, both the emperor and the king of Spain 
openly declared themselyes the allies of the Dutch. Three 
.'ndecisive actions were again fought at sea with De Ruyter 
by the combined fleets under the command of D'Estrees and 
prince Rupert, one on the 7th, another on the 14th of June ; 
the third and last on the 21st of August. Louis took Maes- 
tricht ; but the prince of Orange, uniting his forces to those 
of Montecuculi, the imperial general, cut off the communica- 
tion between France and the Dutch provinces, and obliged 
the king to recall his forces, and precipitately abandon his 
conquests. 

In 1674 Louis was abandoned by England. Charles, 
though loth to desert an ally, vv^lio, by furnishing him with 
money for his private expenses, kept him in a willing though 
most abject state of dependence, could no longer withstand 
the clamors of his people, and made peace with Holland on 
the 9th of February. He still refused to recall a body of ten 
thousand men, who were serving in the French army, but ho 
conditioned with the states not to recruit them. Louis, how- 
ever, undismayed by this desertion, made vigorous head against 
all his enemies. He invaded Franche Comte in person with 
a powerful army, and reduced the whole province in the course 
of six months. In Alsace Turenne gained splendid advant- 
ages ; but the unnecessary ravages which he permitted throw 
a cloud over his reputation which the greatness of his military 
successes can not and ought not to be allowed to remoye. He 
laid waste with fire and sword the whole fertile district of 
the palatinate of the Rhine, exercised on tlie defenseless and 
unoflending inhabitants the most cruel acts of outrage, and 
almost converted the country into a desert. The elector 
palatine beheld a'i one time, from the waUs of his palace at 



A..D. 1'379. I LOUIS XIV. «J 

Manheim, two cities and twenty-five vLlages in flames. The 
prince of Conde, meanwhile, encountered the prince of Or- 
ange in Flanders ; and the comte de Schomberg, who com- 
manded in Rousillon, effectually defended the French frontier 
on the side of Spain. 

In the foUowmg campaign, which was very warmly dis- 
puted, Turenne and Montecuculi opposed each other on the 
Rhine. Turenne was killed in a battle near Sasbach. The 
prince of Conde, who succeeded to his command, confirmed 
by his continued ability and success the renown which had 
acquired for him the surname of " the great." At the end 
of the year he retired from the service, and passed tne short 
remnant of his life at Chantilly. He died in 1686. Monte- 
cuculi retired at the same time, unwilling, it is said, to ex- 
pose in contests with younger adversaries the reputation which 
he had acquired as the rival of Conde and Turenne. Thus 
terminated, nearly at the same time, the military career of 
the three greatest generals in Europe ; and in the following 
year De Ruyter, who had gained on another element a fame 
not perhaps any way inferior to theirs, was killed in an action 
with a French fleet, in the Mediterranean. 

Notwitlistanding the loss of these great men on both sidea, 
the war continued to be carried on with great vigor, and on 
the whole with advantage to the arms of France, but to the 
great exhaustion of all the countries concerned. By the 
mediation of the king of England, who in 1677 had given his 
niece Mary to the prince of Orange in marriage, the peace 
of Nimeguen was concluded in the summer of 1679. By 
this peace Louis retained Valenciennes, and many other 
towns in the Netherlands, and also Franche Comte, which, 
having once before been pledged to France as the dower of 
Margaret of Burgundy, now became, after a long lapse of 
years, an integral part of the French dominions. A separate 
treaty with Holland had been concluded in the August of the 
preceding year. 

The prince of Orange was highly disgusted with this treaty , 
the terms of which he thought too advantageous to France. 
Four days after it was signed he attacked marechal Luxem- 
burg near Mons. Four thousand men were slain in this ac- 
tion. It was supposed, but apparently without sufficient 
foundation, that the prince knew of the treaty, though ha 
professed to bo ignorant of it, and that he made this wantou 
sacrifice of so many lives with a view of breaking it, and ol 
prolonging the war. 



118 



LOUIS XIV. 



[Chap. XXXllJ 



This peace placed Louis at the pinnacle of his glory. In 
flated with succesSj he listened with complacency to the adu- 
lation of his courtiers, who persuaded him that he was in- 
vincible abroad and omnipotent at home. In fact, every 
thing conspired to -raise in him a high opinion of himself. 
Eut if he had looked beyond himself, he would have seen 
that the high position in which he stood was in part owing 
to other causes than to his own inherent greatness. The 
youth and incapacity of Charles II. of Spain, and the indo- 
lence and vices of Charles II. of England, had sunk those 
two monarchies below their natural scale in the balance of 
Europe. The prince of Orange, Louis's chief opponent, was 
a man of simple habits, and averse to boasting and parade, 
and hence his actions were less blazed forth to the world 
than those of the vain-glorious monarch of France, who, in 
his own opinion and that of his dazzled subjects, was regard- 
ed as superior to all the Ifings and warriors either in modern 
or in ancient history. 




liOMS XIV. HUNTINO 



CoNv.j LOUIS XiV. 418 

CONVEllSATION ON CHAPTER XXXIll. 

Geoj'ge. We are no sooner rid of Cardinal Richelieu than 
<ve have got cardinal Mazarin. Pray, mamma, which of the 
two was the worst : 

Mrs. Markham, That is a puzzling question. They were 
men of very different characters Richelieu was haughty 
and overbearing, and bore down all opposition. Mazarin 
was supple and insinuating, and affected great gentleness of 
manner. 

Mary. I can not imagine why he should have been so 
much disliked. 

Mrs. M. He was disliked because he was cunning and 
avaricious, and more solicitous to amass an enormous private 
fortune than to promote the glory of his master or the wel- 
tare of France. He was, moreover, a foreigner, and that was 
another great fault in the eyes of the people. His imperfect 
pronunciation of the language was also a perpetual subject 
of ridicule. 

Mary. I can not think what sort of a language broken 
French can be I 

Mrs. M. I don't know what Mazarin's was like. I only 
know that the duchess de Nemours says in her Memoirs that 
he used to pronounce the word union as if it were oignon, 
which is, you know, French for omon. 

George. That would be a fine joke for the Parisians. 

Mrs. M. They were not sparing of their jokes, and in- 
dulged in many abusive songs and witticisms on the cardinal, 
who bore it all with great indifference. 

Ricfiard. You named another cardinal : De Retz, I think, 
was his name. Was he as bad as the other two ? 

Mrs. M. He was a very clever, but unprincipled man. 
In his youth he led a dissipated life, and tells in his memoirs 
of himself that he quarreled and fought duels for the most 
trifhng causes. In his middle life he mixed with violence in 
all the politics of the time, and was a principal promoter of 
the wars of the Fronde. A long imprisonment and exile 
tamed his turbulent spirit. He wrote the memoirs of hia 
oAvn life, a book very illustrative of his character, and abound- 
ing with shrewd observations. 

Mary. I thought that history of the Fronde very puzzling 
It seemed to me if they none o^ them knew what they were 
about, nor what they wanted. 

Mrs. M The part easiest to comprehend is that vvhieh 



420 LOUIS XIV. [Chap. AAXlIi 

relates to the sufierings of tlie poor, who were stripped and 
pillaged by the soldiery. I have met with a very moving 
account of the state of the neighborhood of Paris at that time 
in the history of the nuns a,t Port Royal. These nuns, besides 
a convent at Paris, had a country house some leagues from 
the city.* During the war of the Fronde this place was 
protected by a guard of soldiers, and became a refuge for the 
neighboring poor, whose distresses are very touchingly de- 
scribed in a letter from the lady abbess to one of her friends. 

George. I should like to see a letter from a lady abbess. 

Mrs. M. Then I will give you a short extract from this ; 
— " We are all occupied," she says, " in contriving soups and 
pottage for the poor. Every thing is pillaged around. Corn- 
fields are trampled down by the cavalry in presence of the 
owners. Despair has seized on all whose confidence is not 
with God. Nobody will any longer plough or dig : nobody 
is certain of reaping what he sows : all is stolen. We have 
concealed as many of the peasants and the cattle as we can. 
The dormitoiy and chapter-house are full of horses. We are 
almost stifled by being pent up with those beasts, but we could 
not resist the pressing lamentations of the poor. In the cellar 
are concealed forty cows. Our laundry is thronged by old 
and infirm, and by children, and our infirmary is full of sick 
and wounded. We have torn up all our linen clothes to dress 
their wounds. Our firewood is consumed, and we dare not 
send into the woods for more, as they are full of marauding 
parties." 

George. I will say that those nuns were good creatures, 
and that old lady abbess a very kind, good sort of woman. 

Ricliard. Pray, mamma, who was that duchess de Longue- 
ville you spoke of ? * 

Mrs. M. No inconsiderable person, I can assure you. Shs 
was sister to the great Conde, and had much of liis restless 
spirit. The duchess de Nemours says, in her memoirs, that 
madame de Longueville entered into the party of the Fronde 
because " she thought it a clever thing for a woman to be 
seen in great affairs, and hoped it would make her distin- 
guished and considered." She was a very active partisan, 
and interfered with the military as well as with the pohtical 
afiiiirs of the faction. 

Mary. Don't you think she nmst have been a sort of 
woman one calls a termagant ? 

Mrs. M. Indeed. I think so ; and there was another verj 

* Call^id Port lioyal zux Ckanf^vs. 



Co.N? J LOUIS XIV 4^: 

conspicuous lady at that time, who also helonged to the clasa 
of termagants : this was mademoiselle de Montpensier. She 
was daughter of Gaston, duke of Orleans, by his first wife, the 
heiress of the duke de Montpensier, and inherited from her 
mother an immenss fortune, and from her grandmother (the 
lady who made herself so conspicuous at the siege of Paris) 
a bold and masculine spirit. Mademoiselle, as she was called 
by pre-eminence, entered heartily into the disturbances of the 
Fronde, and on one occasion took on herself to order the can- 
non of the Bastile to fire upon the royal troops ; an action 
which the king, her cousin, never forgot, or thoroughly forgave. 

George. Why, to say the truth, I don't think it could be 
called the action of a gentle-yfoiaai\. 

Mrs. M. This woman, then, since you will not allow hei 
the epithet gentle, had, with all her violence of tamper, a very 
susceptible heart. When in her forty-second year, she fixed 
her affections on the count, afterward duke, de Lauzun, a 
young, aspiring, and tmprincipled courtier. With great diffi- 
culty she wrung from the king a permission to marry him. 
The vanity of Lauzun induced him to make splendid prepar- 
ations for his nuptials, which he designed should be more like 
a royal than a private wedding. The delay which was caused 
by these preparations gave his enemies time to undermine hia 
good fortune, and the king was prevailed on to retract his 
consent. Madame de Sevigne, who, in her letters to her 
daughter gives a veiy lively account of the whole transaction, 
tells us that the order to break off the marriage was received 
by Lauzun with great submission and respect, and all proj^er 
despair, but that mademoiselle, " following her humor," broka 
out into violent outcries and lamentations. 

George. If I had been the gentleman, my submission 
would have been very sincere. 

M.rs. M. A severe trial was in store for Lauzun's submis- 
sion. About a year after this adventure he fell into disgrace; 
and was imprisoned for eleven years in the citadel of Pignerol. 

Mary. What could he have done to draw on him such a 
punishment as that ? 

Mrs. M. The favor of courts is fickle, and Louis was an 
absolute and vindictive monarch. It was never precisely 
known how Lauzun offended him. Some supposed that he 
had presumed to disobey the royal command, and had pri- 
vately married mademoiselle de Montpensier. But the due 
d'3 St. Simon, a courtier who has written hi? own memoirs, 
gives anoth'jr reason for Lauzun's disgrace. It seems thai 



422 LOUIS XIV. [Chap. XXXIII 

he had continually solicited madame de Montespan, the king's 
mistress, to use her influence in his favor, which she promised 
to do. Lauz'-Ui, however, being somewhat doubtful of her 
sincerity, bribed one of her chambermaids to conceal him 
where he might overhear a private conversation between her 
and the king. It is an old and vulgar saying, which I sup- 
pose will hold good in France as well as in England, that 
listeners seldom hear any good of themselves. At least such, 
it seems, was the case with Lauzun. He took an early 
opportunity of asking madame de Montespan if she had re- 
membered to speak to the Idng in his behalf. She assured 
him that she had not failed so to do, and composed a romance 
of all the services she was going to render him, and of aU the 
fine things she had said of him. On this, Lauzun, in his re- 
sentment, forgetting aU caution, reproached her so bitterly 
with her perfidiousness that she fainted away. This afiront 
neither she nor the king could pardon ; for they were aware 
that he could have obtained the knowledge of her treachery 
only by some base stratagem. 

Richard. Such histories as these are enough to sicken onti 
of courts and courtiers. But still I shall like to hear the end 
of the story. 

Mrs. M. At Pignerol Lauzun found Fouquet, a disgraced 
minister, who had been there in close confinement seven years, 
during which time he had been utterly shut out from all 
knowledge of what was passing in the world. This man and 
Lauzun contrived to gain access to each other's cells. Fou- 
quet greedily inquired news of the court, and Lauzun began 
oy telling his own historj^. Fouquet had formerly known 
him only as a page about court, and when he heard him relate 
that he had risen into high favor, had obtained great digni- 
ties, and lastly, had been on the point of marrying a princess • 
of the royal blood, he thought his head was turned, and be- 
lieving him to be insane, would never listen to him, or give 
credit to what he said. He was even afraid of being left 
alone with him, and it was some time before he discovered 
his error 

Mary. And what became of mademoiselle during those 
■cng eleven years ? 

Mrs. M. She spent them in besieging the ears of the king 
ind of mada,nae de Montespan to obtain her lover's freedom. 
3ut all was in vain ; her lamentations could not influence 
ihcm, till she tiied that universal key, that open sesame, a 
biibe, which will unlock royal as well as plebeian hearts. By 



ObNV J LOUIS XIV. 423 

a donation of a considerable part of her possessions to enrich 
the duke de Maine, one of the king's illegitimate children, 
she at last obtained Lauzun's release frorn captivity. 

George. I will say this for her, that she was a generous, 
constant old soul. 

Mrs. M. Lauzun's return to liberty was clogged with 
the condition that he should renounce the court. But hap 
pening to be in England at the time of the abdication of 
James II., he was extremely instrumental in the escape of 
the queen and her infant son (afterward the Pretender) to 
France ; and Louis XIV. was so well satisfied with his con- 
duct on that occasion, that he restored him once more to favor. 

Mary. And now I suppose that all his and mademoiselle's 
troubles were over ? 

Mrs. M. The troubles of willful and violent people seldom 
end but with their lives. Mademoiselle was privately mar 
ried to Lauzun soon after his return from Pignerol, and he. 
who could never forgive his wife for the sacrifices of fortun*' 
which she had made, even though she had made them foT 
his sake, proved a very ungrateful and negligent husband 
Mademoiselle not being blessed, as you have already per- 
ceived, with the most placable of all tempers, resented her 
grievances not only by words, but sometimes also, it should 
seem, with her nails. At last, after leading for a time what 
might be truly called a cat-and-dog life, they parted in mutua' 
disgust. She retired to a convent, and died in 1693. He 
continued at court, by turns enlivening it by liis wit and tor- 
menting it by his malice, tiU 1725, when he died, at the age 
of eighty-nine. And thus ends the history of these two people, 
who for half a century made a great noise in the world, and 
who have now taken up more of our time than they perhaps 
■deserve. 

George. Do you really think that the grand monarque 
as I believe the French call Lo'iis XIV., was such a verj 
great king ? 

Mrs. M. Mazarin used to say of Louis, " There is stufl 
enough in Louis to make four kings, and an honest man be 
sides." Nature had certainly intended him for a great man , 
but fortune and art combined to spoil the noble work of na 
ture. He had a fine person, which he deformed by the dresa 
of the times ; a fine carriage and manner, rendered almost 
bombastical by his high opinion of his kingly dignity ; a clear 
understanding, but contracted by ignorance; a natural up- 
rightness of mnd, but which \ias warped by flattery, and b> 



424 LOUIS XIV. 1.CHAP XXXIIl. 

the evil comisels of the Jesuits, his confessors. He was ex 
tremely. good-tempered ; but this quality was often neutral- 
ized by his rigid conformity to rules and etiquettes, and often 
abused by his too great lenity to dissolute persons. The onlj 
quality in him which remained unimpaired by the unwhole 
some atmosphere of a servile and vicious court, was his indus- 
trious application to business. To this homely virtue he 
owes, more than to any other, his great reputation, particu- 
larly now that the glare which his conquests and his pomp 
jast around him is faded away, 

Ricliard. What memorials are left of him in France ? 

Mrs. M. It would be difficult to recapitudate them all. 
The harbors of Brest, Toulon, and Dunkirk, the navigable 
canal of Languedoc, which joins the Atlantic to the Mediter- 
ranean, and the excellent roads which lead to and from the 
metropolis, all tend to keep Louis in almost constant fremem 
brance. I ought, however, to add, that all these works were 
greatly promoted by his enlightened minister, Colbert. Louis 
also reformed the police of Paris, and repressed the insolences 
and excesses of that tribe of lackeys who in the former reign 
had made that city a den of thieves. 

George. After all, then, Mazarin did not so much over 
praise him, when he said there was stuff enough in him to 
make one honest man, to say nothing of the four kings. 

Mrs. M. He had many kingly qualities, which were by 
no means incompatible with the honest man. He was ex- 
tremely generous, and had a gracious and obhging manner of 
conferring favors, which greatly enhanced their value. Na- 
ture, among the profusion of her gifts, had bestowed on him 
a fine-toned voice, which gave grace and expression lo every 
trifling word that he uttered. There was also a certain 
grandeur about him which inspired the most audacious person 
with respect and awe. He was studiously pohte, and the sort 
of deportment which we are apt to call the manner of the old 
court traces its origin to those punctilious attentions which 
liouis practiced and exacted in his court. He liked to see 
nimself surrounded by a numerous throng of courtiers. An- 
quetil, in his History of the Court of Louis XIV., says, 
" The king at his rising, at his going to bed, at his repasts, 
in passing in the apartments, in the garden, and in the chase, 
looked to the right and left, remarking every body, and would 
instantly perceive if any person was absent whose state or 
office required him to be in attendance." No monarcji ever 
kept his courtiers in completer subjestion ; all bung u^on his 



CoNV.] LOUIS XIV. t^A 

words and watched his looks. The court often congiated of 
as many as six hundred persons, inchiding both sexes. It was 
impossible to confer frequent and substantial benefits on such 
■ a host. Louis therefore invented a variety of ideal favors, 
which answered his purpose quite as well, and became objects 
of vehement ambition. 

Mary. What could these make-believe favors be ? 

Mrs. M. The permission to wear a peculiar sort of dress, 
ths being ordered to accompany him in a promenade or on a 
journey, an invitation to a fete, the being allowed to hold a 
wax candle during his undressing, and many other equally 
insignificant matters. On the other hand, the being banished 
from court was regarded as little less dreadful than a sentence 
of death. 

Gea?-ge. I can not make up my mind which I should 
have disliked most, to have been one of these six hundred 
courtiers, or to have been the king himself, always followed 
about by such a crowd of gaping, aping people. 

Mrs. M. The king was the most exact man in the world. 
Every movement of the court was regulated by clock-work. 
His private life, like that of his grandfather Henry IV., was 
very immoral. Madame de Maintenon has been supposed to 
have been one of his mistresses, but she was in reality his 
wife, he having privately married her after his queen's death. 
Louis's mistresses might more properly have been called his 
slaves. He required their constant attendance, and, sick or, 
well, they were to be always full dressed and ready to dance, 
or to appear at fetes, or to go on a journey, or whatever he 
chose to do. They were never to be weary, or to mind heat 
or cold, and, above all, were to be always gay and good- 
humored. 

Mary. That was the hardest part of all. 

Richaixl. Did the courtiers all live in the palace ? 

Mrs. M. The greater part of them, I believe, at least 
when the court .was at Versailles. 

Richard. I have heard my uncle speak of Versailles, and 
say it was more like a city than a palace. 

Mrs. M. Louis XIV. (from disgust, as is thought, to the 
Fronde) took a great aversion to Paris, and never liked to re- 
eide there. His court was at first held at St. Germains, but 
was moved afterward to Versailles, which, from only a plain 
hunting lodge built by his father, he converted into one of 
the most splendid and extensive palaces in Europe. It ia 
far from being one of the most beautiful , it is quite a laby- 



;*d ^OUIS XIV. lChai. XXXlll 

tinth of buiJdnig ; and all symmetry or proportion, which is 
the erfsence of beauty it architecture, is confounded in its im 
mense size. 

Richard. I think you said that Louis was extremely ig- 
norant. Surely that was not a very kingly quahty. 

Mrs. M. He had no natural love of learning, and those 
precious hours of his boyhood which he ought to have passed 
in useful study were spent with his mother and her ladies. 
By the sort of educatioi. which he gained in their society, 
his manners acquired a high degree of refinement, but his 
mind remained unfurnished with useful and solid knowledge. 
His ignorance of the history of past times prevented him 
from forming correct judgments of the times he Hved in. He 
believed himself to be the greatest man who had ever exist- 
ed. He was equally unable to judge of others as of himself, 
and his ignorance was a source of perpetual miscalculations 
and mistakes. 

George. I see, then, that learning is as necessary for kings 
as it is for poor folks who have to get their living by it. 

MfS. M. Knowledge is to the mind what eyes are to the 
body, and none but foolish or conceited people would wish to 
continue blind, when with a little exertion they may obtain 
the blessing of sight. 

Mary. Was not this king's reign very long ? 

Mrs. M. It lasted sixty-three years, and may be divided 
.into three distinct periods : his minority, his manhood, and 
his old age. The first, as you have already seen, was a pe- 
riod of turbulence and disorder. The second was full of 
triumph and glitter ; but in the third period his fortunes de- 
clined. His old age was, as you will find in the next chap 
ter, a melancholy series of mortifications and reverses, f^ 
lowed by aJ!flicting family losses. 



CHAPl'ER XXXIV. 

tOIfIS XIV.— IN CONTINUATION 

[Years after Christ, 1079—1715.] 




Statue or Corneii.ls. 

The lestoratioii of peace did not relax Louis's preparations 
Cor future enterprises. He augmented with the greatest pos- 
sible industry the naval and military strength of his kingdom. 
He strengthened and extended his line of defense in Flanders, 
on the Rhine, and in Italy, and this partly by measures 
which, though professed to be merely in execution of the 
treaty of Nimeguen, differed little from actual war. He 
seized on Strasburg^ a free and opulent city, and, fortifying it, 
made it one of the strongest posts on his frontier. He set up 
a claim to the town of Alost in the Spanish Netherlands, as- 
serting that a stipulation of its being ceded to France had been 
left out of the treaty tlorough mere forgetfulriess ; and when 
the Spaniards would not listen to so vain a pretension, he 
caused his troops to form the blockade of 'Luxemburg. Hi 
instigated the Turks to attack the emperor on the side of Hun- 
gary. They penetrated to Vienna, and Louis then for the 
moment withdrew his army from before Luxemburg, de* 



42R LOUIS XIV. [Chap. XXX IV. 

daring that while '-he Turks were in the empire, he would 
make no attack 011 any Christian prince, nor prevent Spain 
from giving aid to expel them. The Turks were no soon(;r 
repulsed, than Louis renewed hostilities ; besieged and took 
Courtrai, Dixmude, and Luxemburg, and also seized Treves, 
and demolished its fortifications. All this, he said, was to 
carry into effect the spirit of the treaty of Nimeguen. But 
during these operations the Imperialists and Spaniards opened 
a negotiation with him at Ratisbon, and it was agreed that 
the peace of Nimeguen should be converted into a truce for 
twenty years, and that France should retain possession 
of Luxemburg. The date of this truce was in August, 
1684. 

The year 1665 is the epoch of the worst blot in the whole 
of Louis's character, the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and 
the persecution of the Hugonots. Cardinal Mazarin had never 
been a persecutor. During the life of Colbert, the influence 
of that wise minister had protected the Hugonots against their 
numerous enemies. He found them useful and intelligent 
subjects, and encouraged their industry as much as lay in his 
power. But Colbert had died in 1683. Louvois, a man 
whom no sense for human suflering seems ever to have diverted 
from any design, and his father, Le Tellier, who was now 
chancellor, spared no efibrts to induce the king to exterminate 
them.. The Catholic clergy and the ^ihurch of E-ome pressed 
their destruction ; and the king himself w».s sufficiently dis- 
posed to think that his will ought to b*^. law in every matter 
in which he chose to interfere. 

In the years 1681 and 1682, several steps had been taken 
against the Hugonots, which could not but excite among them 
• the greatest alarm. Many of their places of worship were 
shut up. They were expelled from civil offices ; they were 
excluded as much as possible from all situations of profit ; and 
their children were allowed and encouraged, evea at the early 
age of seven years, to abjure the religiwn professed by their 
parents, and were admitted as converts into the Hoinan Cath- 
olic church. These severities had induced several families, 
particularly in Poitou, Saintonge, and the neighborhood, to 
abandon their country, while they were yet able to do so, and 
to take refuge in Protestant states. On this it was ordered 
that all seamen and artisans who should attempt to make 
their escape from the country should be sent to the palleys ; 
and as several families were observed to be selling theiff lands 
and houses, it was further ordered, that the property stould 



K.D. 1685.] LOUIS XIV. 429 

be confiscated if the sellers should qu.t the country in les« 
than a year after the sale. 

Some commotions heing excited by these tyrannical pro- 
ceedings, Louis, toward the end of the year 1684, and in the 
beginning of 16So, sent bodies of troops to enforce obedience 
to his commands, and compel the Hugonots to embrace Cath- 
olicism. Of these ti'oops many were dragoons, and from the 
cruel license and excess which they practiced in the harsh 
office committed to them, this persecution is often entitled by 
French writers the " Dragonade." Louvois declared it to be 
" his majesty's will that the greatest rigors shall be executed 
on those w^ho will not adopt his religion, and that such as 
have the stupid vanity to hold out to the last should be pur 
sued to the last extremity." 

On those who refused to obey these commands the troops 
were quartered at discretion, consumed their provisions, pil- 
laged their houses, destroyed their effects, and seized whatever 
belonged to them. They next attacked their persons, and 
tortured them in a thousand ways, without any distinction of 
sex or age. Numbers, who remained firm and unshaken, 
were thrown into dungeons ; or if by chance any of them es- 
caped into the woods, they were pursued like beasts of prey, 
and like them massacred without mercy. The females were 
placed in the convents, where the nuns in their zeal would not 
suffer them to enjoy repose, till they consented to attend the 
mass. All vt^ere reduced to a state of the utmost poverty 
and wretchedness, ; and their places of worship were razed to 
the ground. 

By the twelfth article of the revocation of the edict of 
Nantes it was decreed " that the Hugonots, till it should 
please God to enlighten them, might continue to reside in the 
kingdom, pursue their commerce, and enjoy their property, 
without being subject-to trouble or molestation on account of 
their religion, on condition that they should not publicly pro- 
fess it, nor assemble under pretense of reading prayers, or 
performing any other act of worship v/hatever." But no at- 
tention was now paid to this article. The soldiers were left in 
the provinces, where their outrages daily became greater and 
greater. There was no safety but in flight ; and at the same 
time the strictest precautions were taken to deprive the un- 
happy victims of this horrible tyranny of all possible means 
of escape. The guards were doubled on all the frontiers. The 
peasants were ordered to attack the unhappy fugitives wherevei 
they met them. Soldiers were dispersed over every part of 



»30 LOUIS XIV. [Chap. XXX IV 

the country. T'lie strictest orders were issued to those who 
kept the barriers to prevent any person from passing. AIJ 
who were taken were thrown into prison, stripped of what 
little they had saved from the general wreck, separated from 
their wives and families, loaded with chains, put to the tor- 
ture^ and exposed to all the evils which the savage ingenuity 
of their guards could invent. 

But notwithstanding the vigilance of the government, not 
less, it is said, than half a million of people found means to 
escape, and carried into foreign and rival nations, not only the 
money which they had been able to save, but also, what was 
still more valuable, their skill in manufactures, and their hab- 
its of industry. Nearly forty thousand took refuge in England, 
where they were received with open arms : and we meet daily 
in the most respectable walks of life with the descendants of 
these unhappy refugees ; a large proportion of whom, in this 
their adopted country, have both earned for themselves, and 
transmitted to their descendants, a deservedly high reputation. 
Nearly four hundred thousand, who still continued in France, 
were compelled to attend mass, and to receive the sacrament, 
according to the rites of the Roman communion. History 
since that time has said but little of the French Protestants 
The government has, on the whole, grown milder in its prin- 
ciples, and has begun to learn somethmg, from long and sad 
experience, of the crime and folly of persecution. Liberty of 
conscience, however, never became perfect in France till the 
era of the revolution of 1789, which mingled with its many 
evils and shocking outrages, the great good of enfranchising 
those who differed from the established religion. 

In 1686, chiefly through the influence of the prince of 
Orange, a new league, which united Germany, Holland, and 
Spain against France, was formed by the treaty of Augsburg. 
Savoy also acceded to this alliance. 

The formation of this league did not escape Louis's vigi- 
lance, and he exerted himself to anticipate the designs of his 
enemies. In September, 1688, he detached an army of 
twenty thousand men, with the dauphin at their head, mare 
chal Duras commanding under him, against the Imperialists. 
Philipsburgh, Manheim, and other towns, were soon taken 
At the same time, his attention was forcibly drawn to En 
gland, where events the most important were now taking place, 
events which at length terminated in carrying the whole 
strength of that nation into the interests of his mofct det.^r- 
mined adversaries. * 



A.D. 1690.] LOUIS XIV. «3! 

Charles II. had died in 1685, and was sacceeded by hia 
brother James II., whose rash zeal for the church of Rome, 
together with his arbitrary principles of government, com- 
pelled his subjects to throw off his authority, and to call in 
the prince of Orange to their assistance. William prepared 
immediately to invade England. Louis soon learned, through 
M. d'Avaux, the French envoy at the Hague, the real object 
of William's preparations, and immediately conveyed the in- 
telligence to James. At the same time he offered to reinforce 
the English fleet vv^ith a French squadron, or to send over tc 
England any number of troops ; but this offer was rejected by 
James, who feared to increase the dissatisfaction of his suh 
jects. Louis then proposed to march an army into the Neth 
erlands, and so to detain the Dutch in the defense of their 
own coimtry. But this proposal was also declined. James 
abdicated, and the prince of Orange, who succeeded him, was 
no sooner raised to the throne than he bent all his efforts to 
strengthen the powerful confederacy against France, which 
he himself had been already the chief agent in forming. 

In March, 1689, Louis sent thirteen ships of the line to 
escort James to Ireland, where he had still a party in his fa- 
vor. The first success exceeded his expectations ; but in the 
battle of the Boyne, fought July 12, 1690, in which Jame? 
had the assistance of six thousand French troops, the arms 
of William obtained a decisive victory. James returned t<? 
France, and passed the rem.ainder of his days at St. Ger- 
mains, partly a dependent on the bounty of Louis, and partly 
supported by a private pension from his daughter Mary, now 
queen of England. In the battle of the Boyne William re 
ceived a slight wound. Hence was spread for a time a false 
alarm of his death. This news was received at Paris with 
great demonstrations of joy. The bells were rung, William 
was burned in effigy, and even the guns of the Bastile were 
fired, though not by order of the king, as on an occasion of 
public rejoicing. 

In the mean time, on the continent, the French army burst 
again mto the unhappy country of the Palatinate, which had 
in the former war endured such horrible devastation by the 
army under the command of marechal Turenne. It was now 
determined to make an absolute desert of this fertile and exten- 
sive district, that the Austrian army might find no means of 
subsistence in it. The savage Louvois was the author of thia 
resolve. When he proposed it to Louis, we are told that the 
king remonstrated, saying, that Turenne's ravages had ov 



a32 LOUIS XIV TChap. XXXIV 

cited the indignation of E, irope, and that lie did not like to 
Banction so cruel a measure. But the minister persisted, and 
the king made no further difficulty. Every thing was de- 
stroyed with fire and sword. The wretched inhabitants were 
compelled to quit their habitations in the month of February, 
1689. Men, women, and children had to wander in the 
ftelds without shelter, or to seek for refuge in the neighboring 
etates. The destruction began at Manheim, the residence of 
the elector, and was carried universally throughout the whole 
country. The ravages of Turenne, it is said, were but a 
mere spark compared with this horrid conflagration ; and the 
officers who executed the orders of the government were cov- 
ed with shame at being made the instruments of so much 
cruelty. 

During the remainder of this, and during the succeeding 
campaigns, the Fi'ench armies opposed with gallantry and 
success the forces of their enerrues. Marechal Luxemburg, 
who chiefly commanded in the Netherlands, proved himself 
to be no unworthy successor of Conde and Turenne, his great 
masters in the art of war. In Savoy and Piedmont marechal 
Catinet opposed prince Eugene, and Victor Amadeus, duke 
of Savoy. Marechal Luxemburg died in January, 1695. 
Marechals Boufflers and Villeroy were afterward employed 
in the Netherlands, and subsequently Catinat, who had closed 
the war in Savoy by concluding a separate treaty of peace 
with the duke. 

By sea the advantage was on the side of England and 
Holland. On the 29th of May, 1692, Tourville, the French 
admiral was completely defeated off Cape la Hogue, and the 
renmant of his fleet, which took refuge on the French coast, 
was afterward nearly destroyed by the enemy. James II. 
himself beheld from a neighboring eminence this disaster, 
which seemed to destroy his last hope of being ever re-in- 
sstated in the throne of his ancestors. This loss was, how- 
ever, repaired with great diligence, and in 1693 Tourville 
ssailed with a large fleet to the Mediterranean. On the 17th 
of June he fell in with Sir George Rooke, who, in company 
with a Dutch vice-admiral, was convoying a large fleet of 
merchantmen. The French commander, who was greatly 
superior in force, attacked and defeated the enemy, took or de- 
stroyed several ships of war, and a great number of merchant- 
men, and afterward made unsuccessful attempts on Cadiz and 
Gibraltar. The E iglish retaliated by making attacks on St 
Malo, and on other parts of the French coast. 



\ D. 1597.1 1 OUIS XIV. 433 

All parties were at length inclined sincerely to peace. The 
empire and. Spain were weary of a war which had been at- 
tended only with misfortunes ; the parliament of England 
had long murmured at the heavy expense of engaging so vig- 
orously in the continental quarrels of their sovereign : the 
trade of Holland was interrapted, and her most fruitful prov- 
inces laid waste. Louis must have been sensible that his 
own intense exertions had almost exhausted the great re 
sources of France ; and he was also harboring other designs 
which a restoration of peace was necessary to mature. Un- 
der these circumstances, a treaty was entered into, and peace 
was concluded in September, 1697, at Ryswick, a villag<^ 
near the Hague. 

By this peace Louis restored his conquests from Spain ; he 
acknowledged the title of William III. to the crown of En- 
gland ; he restored Philipsburg and other towns to the em- 
peror, and submitted to destroy the fortifications of Strasburg. 
He resigned also Lorraine, Treves, and the Palatinate. Thus 
he consented at the end of a successful war to terms of peace, 
which scarcely could have been expected, even in defeat, from 
the monarch of so great a country as France. 

The secret of this moderation is, that a far more tempting 
ambition than that of merely extending his frontier was now 
working in his mind. Charles II., king of Spain, son of 
Philip IV. by his second marriage, and the last heir male of 
the emperor Charles V., was now on the brink of the grave. 
All Europe was in anxiety as to the future disposal of the 
rich inheritance which he had to bequeath. He had no 
children, and his nearest relations were Louis XIV. and the 
emperor Leopold. By a remarkable coincidence, they were 
both of them his first cousins, both being grandsons of Philip 
HI. Both were also his brothers-in-law, both having mar- 
ried daughters of Philip IV. : and thus both princes trans- 
mitted also to their children, Louis to the dauphin, and 
Leopold to his son Joseph, king of the Romans, the same 
relationship to the crown of Spain, by the same double con- 
nection, and in precisely the same degree. Louis's wife, 
Marie Therese, and his mother, Anne of Austria, had been 
the elder sisters. But then the right of succession both in 
Louis and his posterity had been solemnly renounced both by 
his father and by himself, particularly by himself in the treaty 
of the Pyrenees. Leopold had moreover in his favor the long 
continuance of the crown of Spain in the Austrian family, 
his direct descent in the male line from the emperor Maxi 

T 



«4 LOUIS XIV. t^HAP. XXXIV 

milian, and the inveterate dislike of the Spanish nation to 
the French. Besides these two great monarchs, there was 
also a young prince of .Bavaria, a grandson of Leopold, who 
traced through his mother, Leopold's daughter by the princess 
of Spain, a direct descent from Philip IV. 

It was not easy to see how these claims ctiuld he recon 
ciled Louis had shovra sufficiently, on former occasions, that 
the treaty of the Pyrenees, and other formal renunciations, 
would not stand in the way of his claiming any thing he 
chose to have ; but he feared to see all Europe oppose his 
ambition, and he felt that he could not cope with all its pow- 
ers united. He was not the less desirous, however, both to 
•get all he could, and also to keep out of the hands of the em- 
peror all that he could not get for himself. With these views 
he made a proposal to the king of England to join in a treaty 
for settling a partition of the Spanish empire, to take place 
after the death of Charles II. William acceded, probably 
from apprehension that Louis might else obtain the whole oi 
a larger share for himself. By this partition treaty Spain 
and the Indies (with the exception of Guipuscoa, the north 
west district of the province of Biscay in Spain) were to bo 
assigned to the young prince of Bavaria ; Naples, Sicily, and 
Guipuscoa to the dauphin ; and the duchy of Milan to the 
archduke Charles, second son of the emperor Leopold. 

The king of Spain's indignation at this parceling out of 
nis dominions may be more easily conceived than expressed. 
Anxious to preserve his empire entire, he made a will, by 
which he bequeathed the whole of it to the prince of Bavaria 
That young prince, however, died suddenly. Louis and Will- 
iam signed a new partition treaty, by which Spain and the 
Indies were to be transferred to the archduke Charles, and 
Milan to the duke of Lorraine, who in his turn was to cede 
Lorraine to France. AH these arrangements, however, were 
finally superseded by a new will made by the king of Spain 
about a month before his death, by which he bequeathed his 
whole dominions to Phihp duke of Anjou, grandson of Louis, 
and second son of the dauphin. Charles II. died November 
I, 1700. 

Louis, it is said, hesitated whether to accept for his grand- 
son this splendid inheritance, or to abide by the treaty of 
partition, which would have annexed Naples, Sicily, and 
Lorraine to the French monarchy, and also have extended 
its frontier on the side of Spain. But he naturally decided 
to espouse the claims of his grandson, and probablr lid no* 



A.ij. 1701.] LOUIS XIV. 43d 

much care what William might think of the infraction thm 
made in the partition treaty — a treaty which some think that 
Louis brought forward originally only as a pretense to covei 
the secret intrigues which he was at the same time carrying 
on with the Spaniards. However tliis may be, both WilUara 
and the States of Holland, who were unprepared for imme- 
diate hostilities, recognized the title of Philip V. Spain read- 
ily acknowledged him, and Louis was admitted into the pos- 
session of the Spanish Netherlands, and of the duchy of Milan 
in his right. 

The emperor, meanwhile, hesitated, but at length com 
menced war in Italy, where prince Eugene gained signal ad- 
vantage over the French generals, marechals Catinat and 
Villeroy. England and Holland soon after joined with the 
emperor, by a treaty concluded at the Hague on the 7th of 
September, 1701 ; but it is supposed the war would have 
been very unpopular in England, if Louis, on the death of 
James II., who died September 16 of the same year, had no( 
most indiscreetly acknowledged his son as king of England , 
and this, notwithstanding that he had so lately recognized 
"William's title in the treaty of E-yswick. The whole English 
nation fired at this insult. William was always eager fot 
war with France, and the States of Holland were at this time 
guided entirely by the counsels and policy of the English gov- 
ernment. The death of William, a monarch of whom it has 
been wittily said, that he was king of Holland and stadtholder 
of England, seemed for a moment to threaten the dissolution 
of the alliance ; but queen Anne, who succeeded him, re- 
newed all his engagements. Churchill, earl of Marlborough, 
who had served under Turenne, was appointed to the com- 
mand of the allied army in the Netherlands, where he com- 
pelled Boufflers, the French general, to retreat, and where he 
took Venlo, Ruremonde, and Liege. 

The victories of Marlborough are so much a portion of the 
English history, that I must here pass them over in my brief 
account of this long reign. I wiU therefore only say, that 
after the entire defeat of the French army under marechal 
Tallard, at Hochstadt, or Blenheim, August 13, 1704, mare- 
chal Villars, who was now the ablest and the most distin- 
guished of the French generals, firmly and prude'itly checked 
the advance of the allies, and effectually protected the French 
territory from invasion. 

At the same time, in Spain itself the arms of the allies 
were attended with the most rapid and signal success. Tho 



435 LOUIS XIV. [Chap. XXXIY. 

archduke Charles was proclaimed king, by the title of Charle:< 
III. of Spain. The whole of Catalonia declared in his favor ; 
and under the guidance of the active and intrepid earl of 
Peterborough, who marched through the whole country with 
but little resistance, he at length entered in triumph into 
Madrid. That capital, however, Philip recovered soon after- 
ward. 

In the campaign of 1706, the allied armies subdued almost 
all Flanders, took Antwerp, Bruxelles, Ostend, and Menin. 
In Italy, where the French arms had till now the advantage, 
prince Eugene, in the decisive battle of Turin, Sept. 7, 1706, 
obtained a victory which left the house of Bourbon no hope 
of restoring its power in that country. 

In 1707 one ray of brighter fortune was seen to gleam on 
the declining interests of France, the allies being in this year 
completely defeated in Spain, by the duke of Berwick, a nat- 
ural son of James II., in the bloody battle of Almanza. This 
battle was fought April 25 ; and from this time the cause of 
Phihp, though not decided, seems in Spain itself to have been 
usually the strongest. Every where else, however, there was 
nothing but gloom and despondency. In 1708 an attempt 
failed to invade Scotland, where it had been hoped that a 
diversion might be excited in favor of the exiled house of 
Stuart. In Flanders, though Louis's dispirited armies still 
supported the contest with resolution, the allies made alarm- 
ing and almost continual progress, and by taking Lille, on 
October 25, appeared to open for themselves the way to Paris. 

Exhausted in his resources, and humbled in his ambition, 
Louis, though he had before vainly tried to negotiate, now 
sent an embassador to the Hague to sue for peace. He offered 
even much more than the allies had claimed in the beginning 
of the war, and his proposals ought reasonably to have met 
with acceptance. But the allies insisted on terms so extrav 
agant, that though the embassador consented to sign the pre 
liminaries, Louis himself rejected them with disdain. The 
French people, though oppressed and impoverished, shared in 
the indignation which their sovereign felt and expressed ; and 
the campaign of 1709 opened, on the side of France, with 
gloomy but determined resolution. But the ascendency of 
the allies, and the skill of Eugene and Marlborough, whc 
were now united in the command of the armies in the Neth- 
erlands, presented obstacles too powerful to be overcome even 
by the strength and valor of desperation. In this campaign 
Frajice etill losi eround, though marechals Villars and BoufT 



A.I>. 1711. J LOUIS XIV. t3f 

lers showed themselves worthy opponents of the distingu' shed 
generals whom they had to encounter. Tn the close of this 
year the pope acknowledged Charles III. as king of Spain, 
Naples, and Sicily. 

In 1710 Louis again sued for peace, and added new con- 
cessions to those he had proposed the year before. Among 
the rest, he offered to ratify the pope's acknowledgment of 
the archduke Charles ; to give no assistance to his grandson 
Philip, and even to advance a sum of money to the allies, to 
be used by them in carrying on the war against him in Spain ; 
to raze the French line of fortresses on the Rhine ; to demol- 
ish the fortifications and fill up the harbor of Dunkirk ; and to 
cede to the Dutch a strong frontier in the Netherlands. He 
consented also to acknowledge the title of queen Anne to the 
throne of England, and to expel the Pretender from France. 

Conferences to take these terms into consideration were 
opened at Gertruydenburg, in the month of March. But the 
allies, intoxicated with success, refused them even with insult, 
and demanded that Louis should himself undertake to expel 
his grandson from the Spanish throne. This ignominy Louis, 
overwhelmed as he was, rejected with scorn, exclaiming : 
" Since I must make war, I had rather make it against my 
enemies than my children." 

The war was accordingly renewed. Louis had again the 
mortification of seeing the allies successful in Flanders. In 
Spain, however, after many fluctuations of fortune, Philip 
gained the decided advantage, and at length acquired pos- 
session of the whole kingdom, with the exception of the prov- 
ince of Catalonia. 

In 1711 the efforts of Villars in the Netherlands were 
doomed again to sink before the superior genius of Marlbor- 
ough, a general whose rare destiny it was never to experience 
any serious repulse. But though triumphant to the close of 
his military life, the altered policy of his court made this his 
last campaign. An extraordinary change of parties took 
place in England. The new ministers determined to make 
peace, and Marlborough was compelled by their conduct to 
resign his command in the Netherlands. Pie was succeeded 
by the duke of Ormond, v/ho had private instructions not to 
fight. Preliminaries of peace with England were signed in 
London in the month of October, 1711. On the 29 th of 
January following a congress was opened at Utrecht ; and on 
the 17th of July, 1712, the English troops withdrew from the 
army of the allies 



|3B LOUIS XIV. [Chai XXXIV 

Prince Eugeim, though thus deserted, was still formiilable , 
but his army was routed on the 24th of the same month at 
Denain, hy marechal Villars. It is said that prince Eugene 
had sent a plan of his position to Marlborough, who was at 
this time at Aix-la-Chapelle, and that the duke seeing the 
danger to which he was exposed, instantly dispatched a 
courier to warn him of it ; but the courier did not arrive till 
it was too late. Several fortresses fell into Villars' hands after 
this victory, which was the more important, as it cheered the 
spirits of the French nation — a nation always ready to be re- 
animated by the first symptoms of success, and raised the tone 
and confidence of its embassadors in the pending negotiation 
at Utrecht. The strength of the French interests had also 
received previously a great accession in consequence of the 
death, April 17, 1711, of the emperor Joseph, who had suc- 
ceeded his father Leopold in 1705. Joseph was succeeded 
by his brother, the archduke Charles, the competitor of 
Philip V. for the crowl^ of Spain, who thus became the em- 
peror Charles VI. Europe in general was even more unwill- 
ing to see the union of Spain and the empire in the hands of 
the same prince of the house of Austria than that two princes 
of the house of Bourbon should be in possession of the thrones 
of France and Spain. 

Treaties of peace with Great Britain, Hollaiid, Prussia, 
Portugal, and Savoy, were signed at Utrecht in the spring 
and summer of 1713. By these treaties Philip was acknowl- 
edged king of Spain, but at the same time renounced, both for 
himself and his descendants, all future succession to the throne 
of France. Similar renunciations of all succession to the 
Spanish territories were made by Louis for the whole house 
of Bourbon. Louis recognized the title of Aime, and also the 
succession of the house of Hanover to the crown of England. 
He consented to raze the fortifications of Dunkirk, and to ceJe 
to England, Newfoundland, Hudson's Bay, Acadia, and the 
island of St. Christopher's. It was stipulated that the empe- 
ror should have Naples, Milan, and the Spanish Netherlands : 
that tke duke of Savoy should have Sicily wdth the title of 
king : that Lille and its dependencies should be restored to 
France ; but that the frontier of the United Provinces should 
be strengthened by the possession of Namur, Charleroi, Lux 
emburgh, Ypres, and Nieuport. 

The emperor alone continued the war ; but in the follow- 
ing year he also agreed to make peace, and a treaty was con- 
aluded between him and Louis at Baden, Sept. 7, 1714 



li.V. 1 15. J LOUIS XIV. 43S 

The Catalans, with uncalculating ff.atermination, and al^ 
thoug.i forsaken both by the empire and by England, still 
dared to maintain the contest a short time longer. But Bar- 
celona, their capital, after sustaining a severe struggle, at 
length capitulated, and they were compelled to submit. 

Thus Louis at last saw the termination of that disastrous 
war which, though it had strikingly displayed the great re 
sources of his kingdom, yet had reduced it to extreme wretch- 
edness and poverty. The unreasonableness of the allies, in- 
deed, in rejecting those conditions which had, in 1710, been 
offered at Gertruydenberg, had been justly punished by their 
own subsequent divisions, and by the natural consequences of 
those divisions. The humiliation of France had been in the 
same measure relieved ; but misery enough remained to show, 
in frightful colors, the crime and folly of ambition, and to 
prove to the king, who was now seventy-six years old, and 
visibly drawing near his end, that he had altogether mistaken 
the true business of life, and all the ends for which his power 
had been given. 

Domestic afflictions, also, fell heavily on him during the 
last years of his life. The dauphin, the only one of his 
legitimate children who survived infancy, had died April 14, 
1711, leaving three sons, the due de Burgundy, Philip king 
of Spain, and the due de Berri. The due de Burgundy, a 
prmce of the highest promise, died February IS, 1712, and 
was buried in the same grave with his wife, who had died 
only six days before him. His eldest child, the due de Bre- 
tagne, survived only about three weeks, and the due de Berri 
died May 4, 1714. The king of Spain having renounced 
his succession to the throne of France, all the hopes of the 
Bourbons now rested on the due d'Anjou, the sole surviving 
son of the due de Burgundy, a feeble infant, for whose life 
also great fears had been entertained. 

At the close of a life thus bowed down by calamity, Louis 
sought refuge in the hopes of religion. Amid all his vices, 
the principle of religioi;., or at least the fear of future punish- 
ment, seems always to have retained some hold of him. He 
had often been a prey to the visitations of remorse. He had 
devoutly observed the penances of his church, and though his 
persecution of the Hugonots shows tSat he could know but 
little of the true spirit of Christianity, yet let us still hope 
that age, disease, and affliction, may have opened his heart 
to a better lesson at the last than he had ever learned before. 

Jn August, 1715, hi? malady increased, and it appeared 



i40 LUOIS XIV. IVHA.T. XXXIT 

evident tliat death was approaching. On the 26th of tha* 
month, he ordered his infant successor to be brought into hi» 
apartment. He took him in his arms, and thus addressed 
him aloud, in the presence of all his attendants : " You will 
Boon be king of a great kingdom. What I most strongly 
recommend to you is, never to forget the obligations you are 
under to God. Remember that to him you owe all you pos ■ 
sess. Endeavor to preserve peace with your neighbors. 1 
have been too fond of war. Do not you follow my example 
in that, nor in my too lavish expenditure. Take advice in 
all things, and endeavor to find out the best, that you may 
adhere invariably to it. Ease your people as soon as you 
can, and do that which I have had the misfortune of not 
being able to do." These words Louis XV. had inscribed 
afterward at the head of his bed. 

Louis XIV. died September 1, 1715, being within a few 
days of 77 years of age. 

He married Marie Therese of Austria, only daughter of 
Philip IV. of Spain, by his first marriage with the princess 
Elizabeth, daughter of Henry IV. of France. 

By her he had one son, Louis, the dauphin, who, in the 
history of the times, has commonly the title of Monseigneur. 
This prince (who died April 14, 1711) married Marie- Anne- 
Christine- Victorie, a princess of Bavaria, and by her had 
three sons : 

Louis, due de Burgundy, who married Marie Adelaide of 
Savoy, and was the father of Louis XV. 

Philip V. of Spain : and 

Charles, due de Berri, who died May 4, 1714. 

Louis XIV. had two sons and three daiaghters, who died 
young. Ho had also several mistresses, and many La'uraJ 
children. 



0«»T.J LOUIS XIV. 441 

CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XXXIV 




Louis XIV. (From Van der Meulen's Portrait). 

Richard. You said very truly, mamma, iu yoiu yester' 
day's conversation, that the old age of Louis XIV. was a 
melancholy period. 

Mary. But the worst was the death of all those poor 
princes and princesses. 

Mrs. Markham. The death of the elder, or as he was 
called, the grand dauphin, was no doubt a great affliction to 
the king his father ; but that of the duke of Burgundy, the 
younger dauphin, was a still greater. 

George. Was that first dauphin a bad sort of a man ? 

Mrs. M. He was one of those people who might be called 
neither bad nor good. He was very good-natured, but had a 
littleness of mind which kept him always occupied in petty 
affairs. At the same time he was often observed to be 
wholly indifferent to things which were of real importance. 
He overlooked his domestic expenditure very minutely, and 
knew exactly the price of every article of consumption, and 
would never give more for any thing than it was worth. 

George. That was a very fiddle-faddle sort of work for a 
dauphin of France. He should Imve left all that to his 
stewards and servants. 

Mrs. M. His great attention to these lesser matters ac- 
quired for him a character for niggardliness, which was in 
some respects undeserved, for he was extremely charitable to 



k*9 LOUIS XIV. [Chap. XXXIV 

the poor, and liberal to bis dependents. He bad another 
quality which, in a prince, is not a popular one : this was his 
incredible silence. (I use the very word of the French au- 
thor). This fault was accompanied, however, with its con- 
comitant virtues, discretion and secrecy, which, in a meddling 
and mischief-making court, like that of Louis XIV., made 
ample amends for it. 

Richard. Had his education been neglected ? 

Mrs. M. Very far from it : Louis had taken great painti 
to procure proper instructors for him. One of these instruct- 
ors was Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, whose introduction to 
universal history, which you, Richard, have read, was writ- 
ten for the dauphin's use. But he had not a capacity to gain 
much benefit from these advantages. He had so little taste 
for literature, that, after he became his own master, he nevei 
read any thing but the lists of the deaths and marriages in 
the Gazette de France. He had an awkward address, and, 
particularly when in his father's presence, was extremely 
timid and constrained. Louis, indeed, did not strive to re- 
move his shyness, but rather increased it by the coldness and 
reserve of his own manner ; and it has been observed of him 
that he was to his son "always a king, and seldom a father." 

George. Oh ! poor dauphin, that was not the way to im- 
prove his capacity. I think if papa were to treat me with 
coldness and reserve, I should soon lose all the little sense I 
have ; or at least I should cease to take any pleasure in im- 
proving it, which I suppose would be almost the same thing 

Mary. What sort of a woman was the dauphiness ? 

Mrs. M. She was not a woman who could in any way 
counteract the defects of her husband. Unhappily for her, 
she entered the most brilliant court in Europe without any 
of those prepossessing qualities which were necessary to ac- 
quire consideration in it. She was very plain, and was nei- 
ther graceful nor witty, and understood French very imper- 
fectly. The diversions of the ladies of the court appeared to 
her frivolous and uninteresting, and she withdrew herself as 
much as she could from their society. 

George. I think she showed herself to be a very sensible 
woman. 

Mrs. M. I am not so sure of that. She loved to shut her- 
self up in a Httle dull back-room, with one of her German 
women, with whom she could converse at ease in her native 
language. The king took great pains to lure her from her 
love of retirement, but in vain, and the dauphin sjon left liei 



CANV.J LOUIS XIV 44rf 

for moie cheerfu] society. She gradually sunk into a pro- 
found melancholy, and after a few years died, having, as the 
Prench ladies asserted, literally moped herself to death. 

Richard. Well, I think she would have been a more 
sensible woman if she had learned French, and tried to make 
herself agreeable. You know, mamma, you often tell us that 
the cultivation of cheerfulness is one of the moral duties. 

Mary. And now, mamma, will you tell us about the sec- 
ond dauphin, whose death was such a great grief to the old 
king ? 

Mrs. M. His death was a grief not only to the king, but 
also to the whole nation. He had a lively wit, and an acute 
and penetrating genius, and what was still more valuable, he 
possessed also a sound judgment and an inflexible integrity. 

George. How delightful is it to find a faultless character 
at last I 

Mis. M. The duke of Burgundy (that, as you recollect, 
was his title in his father's life-time) was not entirely fault- 
ess. He was by nature extremely passionate ; but this fault 
he at length subdued, and brought his temper under such 
good control, that after his boyish days its impetuosity rarely 
if ever broke forth. His mind had been early trained to 
every virtue by Fenelon, the great and good archbishop of 
3ambray. 

Richard. Fenelon I I thought he had been the author of 
Telemachus. 

Mrs. M. So he was. That agreeable romance was writ 
ten for the instruction of his royal pupil. The duke was al- 
ways greatly attached to Fenelon, and when this venerable 
old man had fallen into disgrace with the king, persevered in 
showing him every attention in his power. 

Mary. What could such a good man have done to get 
into disgrace ? 

Richard. Whatever the reason was, he ought to have 
been forgiven, though it were only for the sake of that delight- 
ful book. 

Mrs. M. It was principally that delightful book which 
occasioned his disgrace. The king fancied there were some 
passages in it which alluded to the tyranny of his own gov- 
ernment. But to resume what I was saying of the duke of 
Burgundy. He was sincerely religious, and made the per- 
formance of his duty the main business of his life. In expec- 
tation of the throne which seemed to await him, he constantly 
studied to acquire a perfect knowledge of every thing that 



141 LOUIS XIV. [Chap. XXXIV 

could contribute to make the country flourishing, and his peo 
pie happy. He was about thirty years old, when by his 
father's death he became dauphin. The king his grandfather, 
who knew how to appreciate his merit, admitted him to a 
much greater participation of state afiairs than had ever been 
allowed to his father, and treated him with a deference and a 
respect for his opinion, which astonished all those who had 
seen how tenacious Louis always was of his own authority 
and opinions. Although he had the disadvantage of a plain 
face and a very indifferent figure (he was awry and walked 
lame), yet his sensible countenance and noble deportment 
gave a dignity even to his person. The courtiers found that 
he was not to be deceived by any of their artifices, that he 
saw through their malice and despised their littleness. The 
ministers also (who, in spite of the king's jealousy of being 
governed, had long had every thing their own way) soon per- 
ceived that to his grandfather's close application to business 
he added a much sounder judgment and a clearer insight into 
affairs. 

Mary. Was his wife as excellent as himself? 

Mrs. M. She was one of the most amiable and engaging 
creatures that ever lived ; and she and the prince presented 
the example, an example which in a court is but too rare, of 
a perfectly happy and united couple. 

Mary. Did she shut herself up like the other dauphiness ? 

Mrs. M. Her chief pleasure was to promote the happiness 
of the king, who was now grown old, and was often melan- 
choly. She also attached herself to madame de Maintenon, 
and generally called her by the endearing name of " ma tante." 
She was only eleven years old when she came to France, and 
although so young, had from the very first an extraordinary 
tact m accommodating herself to the humor in which she saw 
the king, and could be grave or gay as the occasion required 
Sometimes she would perch herself on the arms of his chair, 
or plant herself at his knees, and caress or tease him by tur*>s, 
all which he would take in very good part. 

Mary. It must have been a droll sight to have seon thi^.t 
pompous old king playing at romps with that nieiry little 
princess. 

Mrs. M. This little princess knew how to be wise as well 
as merry. In all her lively saUies she preserved a discretion 
which kept them from being ever displeasing, and would in- 
stantly desist when the king began to be weary. In pubho 
sir* always took care to conduct herself toward him w'th 1h« 



doNV.] LOUIS XIV, 445 

most marked respect. The king doled upon her, and in hia 
latter years her presence became essential to his comfort. She 
seldom engaged in the gay diversions of the court, but when 
she did, liOuis always expected her to come to his chamber 
before she retired to rest, and give him an account of all that 
had passed. 

Mary. I suppose that madame de Maintenon was a 
very good woman, since this charming princess was so fond 
of her. 

Mrs. M. Madame de Maintenon has two characters. By 
some persons she is esteemed a woman of the greatest merit, 
and by others an artful and narrow-minded bigot. All how- 
ever agree that she was a woman of great talents, and of 
most engaging manners. Most of her cotemporaries, and 
particularly madame de Sevigne, speak with great admiration 
of the charms of her conversation ; and indeed it was to hei 
conversational powers that she in great measure owed her 
elevation. 

Richard. Who was she originally ? 

Mrs. M. She was originally a Hugonot, and was grand 
daughter of Theodore d'Aubigne, half brother of Henry IV 
Her father died when she was very young, and it was re- 
marked of her mother that her manner to her daughter was 
£0 unnaturally rigid, that she never embraced her but twice 
in her life. She did not, however, remain long under her 
mother's care. A Catholic lady, to pay her court to Mary o\ 
Medicis, obtained an order to take her away from her rela- 
tions, for the purpose of bringing her up a Catholic, a species 
of violence wliich was not only allowed but even encouraged 
by the government, and which was one of the most cruel 
tyrannies to which the Hugonots were exposed in this and in 
the preceding reigns. But to proceed ; the lady who had thus 
taken charge of mademoiselle d'Aubigne soon became weary 
of her, and married her, when only fov *een, to the poet Scar- 
ron, a man of great wit, but not, I ueileve, of correct man- 
ners. She was so poor, that Scarron acknowledged in hia 
marriage contract, that all the dower which he received with 
nis wife consisted of " two large eyes, full cf malice, a fine 
shape, a pair of beautiful hands, a great deal of wit, and a 
rental of lour Louis." Scarron's death did not loave her much 
richer than she was at her marriage, excepting xudeed in the 
rriends whom the propriety of her conduct and ihe fascination 
e^ her maimers had gained her. She afterward obtained the 
cSiee of governess to the children of madame de Montespau 



t4B LOUIS XIV. [Chap. XXXI V 

the king's mistress. In this situation the king had frequent 
opportunities of seeing her, and although he had a prejudice 
against her at first, yet at last he became so much captivated 
by her agreeable conversation, and by the evenness of her 
placid temper, which formed a strong contrast to madame de 
Montespan's violent and variable humors, that not long after 
the queen's death he married her. 

George. It is a comfort to find now and then a king who 
marries to please himself 

Mrs. M. The marriage, however, was kept secret, or at 
least was not avowed. 

George. You said she had two characters. Which do 
you think she deserved, the good or the bad one ? 

Mrs. M. Whatever faults she might have, she can not 
be denied the merit of a singular modesty. She assumed no 
airs of greatness in consequence of her elevation. Her dress, 
which was elegant and becoming, was remarkable for its sim- 
plicity, and her manners preserved their natural frankness 
The only change that could be perceived in her was, that she 
withdrew more from general society, and confined herself al- 
most entirely to the company of the king, and to that of a few 
ladies who perhaps were in her secret. 

Mai'y. I suppose she thought herself very happy to be 
the king's vnfe. 

Mrs. M. Alas ! ambition is of all passions the one of 
which the gratification is the least conducive to happiness. 
No one experienced this more fully than madame de Mainte- 
non, who appears to have been a much happier woman as the 
wife of the poor old poet Scarron, than she was as the wife 
of the grand monarqiie. She resigned the ease and liberty 
of a private condition, and as her marriage was concealed, 
she had none of the gratifications, such as they are, of being 
a queen. Her life ever after was dull and monotonous, and 
she might be considered as a sort of state prisoner at large. 
In a letter to one of her friends she thus feelingly expresses 
herself: " Why can I not give you all my experience ? Why 
can I not make you see the ennui which devours the great, 
and the labor it is to them to get rid of their time ? See you 
not that I die of sadness in a fortune beyond what I could 
ever imagine, and that nothing but the assistance of God 
prevents my sinking under it?" In another letter she com- 
plains of " the torment of having to amuse an unamusable 
king." 

George. I am sure ^hat on such terms I should nevei 



OoNV.] LOUIS XIV. 447 

wash to be great. But, mamma, how came tlie court of Louis 
XIV. to be so dull ? I always thought it was the gayest in 
the world. 

Mrs. M. So it was m the former part of his reign, and 
especially when he was under the influence of madame de 
Montespan, who loved pomp, and show, and diversions. But 
in his latter years all was changed. 

Mary. That was because the king was grown old and 
grave, I suppose. 

Mrs. M. The same etiquettes and forms remained, but 
the spirit was gone, which before had enhvened them. To 
quote from an ingenious modern writer : " The pomp and 
ceremonies of the court were like wedding-dresses upon dead 
corpses : all was weariness, disgust, and misery." 

Richard. When Louis saw how tiresome all these eti- 
quettes and ceremonies were become, I wonder he did not 
leave them off. 

Mrs. M. Habit, you know, is second nature ; and Louis 
was become so much habituated to the pompish trammels 
which he had imposed upon himself that he would not have 
been comfortable without them. I think I have before told 
you that he was methodical to the greatest degree. In his lat- 
ter years the regularity of his life met with few interruptions. 
Every morning at eight o'clock his valet called him, and his 
old nurse, who hved to a great age, entered his apartment, 
accompanied by his first physician and surgeon. The two 
fatter examined into the state of his health. The grand 
chamberlain, and a tribe of courtiers by whom the privilege 
of attending at the levee was eagerly sought, were next ad- 
mitted ; and the king proceeded to dress himself, which, as 
the Frenchman says who has given us this detail, " he did 
with grace and address." We are next told (for our author 
is very minute) that the king used no dressing-table, but that 
one of the persons in waiting held the looking-glass for him. 
Another of the peculiarities of his toilet was, that he always 
put on his wig before he left his bed. 

Mary. Was that for fear of getting cold ? 

Mrs. M. The reason was that he thought it undignified 
to be seen bare-headed. His wig was always handed to him, 
before his curtains were undrawn, at the end of a long cane. 
We need not, however, go through the whole routine of the 
levee. When it was at last happily over, the king common- 
ly occupied himself till dinner-time in transacting business 
with his i^'iiuist ^rs. He din/id in public, and the privilege of 



148 LOUIS XIV tCHAP. XXXIV 

Beemg him eat his dinner was a highly-courted honor. The 
Deing gazed at by a staring crowd did not at all spoil his ap- 
petite. The duchess of Orleans says that she has often seen 
him eat four plates of soup, a whole pheasant, and two good 
slices of ham, besides mutton, salad, and garlic, with pastry, 
fruit, and sweetmeats into the bargain. 

Mary. Don't you think he must have been rathei 
greedy ? 

ikfrs M. Perhaps the duchess might exaggerate. Louis 
was considered a very temperate man. He generally spent 
the evening in madame de Maintenon's apartment, where he 
would often transact business with one of his ministers, while 
madame de Maintenon sat by working or reading, and seldom 
appearing to take any part in what was going on. The king 
would now and then ask her opinion. She would then make 
some remark, but always in very guarded terms. 

George. I don't wonder the poor thing wrote such mel- 
ancholy letters. It was a very dull way of spending her 
evenings. 

Mr$. M. When she retired to bed, which she always did 
early, the king passed the remainder of the evening with his 
children and grandchildren. At twelve o'clock commenced 
the ceremonies of going to bed, which were nearly as formal 
and tedious as those of the rising. Thus was the king in 
public from morning till night — a manner of life which to us, 
who are not accustomed to it, would be irksome in the ex- 
treme, and which some one has compared to that of an actor 
who should be never off the stage. 

Richard. His time, however, was not all spent in tiresome 
ceremonies, for he seems to have passed a great deal of it in 
transacting business. 

Mrs. M. And even his application to business degenerat- 
ed in his old age into a minute and meddling attention to the 
most trivial matters, to the great neglect of more important 
affairs — a neglect which the ministers well knew how to take 
advantage of for their own purposes. 

Mary. Pray, mamma, did the king wear a wig because 
he was bald, or because it was the fashion ? 

Mrs. M. The wearing wigs was universal at the close of 
this reign, though the custom had its origin only in the be- 
ginning of it. Louis, when a little boy, had remarkably 
beautiful hair, which hung in curls on his shoulders. The 
courtiers, always ready to copy their masters, had wigs made 
in imitation of his natural locks. When the king became a 



CoNV j LOUIS XIV 443 

man, he, too, wore a wig. Wig? were, by degrees, ma.de 
larger and larger, and were more and more curled and friz- 
zled, till at last they became enormous bushes. 

Gewge. What ridiculous figures the men must have 
looked ! 

Mrs. M. The rest of the dress was no less ridiculous. 
The fine gentlemen of this time were tricked out in a profu- 
sion of frippery, and must have looked like so many great 
dolls. A foreigner, who visited Paris in the early part of the 
reign of Louis XIV., expresses great surprise at the dress of 
the Parisians. 

Mar]/. Pray what does he say about it ? 

Mrs. M. He says that " they dressed very studiously ; and 
that lace, ribbons, and looking-glasses (which said looking- 
glasses the ladies used to carry in their hands) were three 
things which the French could not do without ; and that 
they were very changeable in their fashions." He also tells 
us that the gentlemen's wigs were so finely curled, that for 
fear of squeezing them they were accustomed to carry their 
hats in their hands, instead of wearing them on their heads. 
This foreigner notices, among other things, the overstrained 
civility, which, in imitation of the court manners, was prac- 
ticed at this time by all orders of people in France, to a ridic- 
ulous and burlesque excess. He adds that there were even 
masters who gave instructions in the art of politeness. 

George. For my part, I had rather have honest rudeness 
than sham politeness taught by a civility-master 

Mrs. M. What is most to be desired is that honest civil- 
ity which is taught by a kind and feeling heart. I suspect 
that the politeness which was cultivated in the court of Louis 
was commonly of that hollow and unmeaning sort which con- 
sists chiefly, or rather entirely, in fine words. I will give you 
one or two instances which the due de St. Simon relates in 
his Memoirs. The cardinal d'Estrees, though advanc"4 in 
years, had preserved his teeth, which, having a wide mo -ih, 
he showed extremely. Being one day at the king's dinner. 
Louis addressed himself to him, and complained of the in 
convenience of having lost his teeth. The cardinal replied 
with, a smile, which displayed his own fine teeth to advant 
age, " Ah, sire, who is there that has any ?" The king was 
one day walking at Marly with the cardinal de Polignac, and 
was himself showing him the gardens, which, of course waa 
a great honor. It began to rain a little, and the king express 
insr sotno concern at seeing the cardinal exposed to this rais 



t5J LOUIS XiV. [Chap. XXX IV 

fortune, the caidinal exclaimec^*, "Ah, sire, the rain of Marly 
does not wet." 

Mary. In England, mamma, we should not call that a 
civil speech, so much as a downright fib. 

Mrs. M. Then what will you think of the following ? On 
the death of Corneille, the great French dramatist, there waa 
a vacancy in the French academy, a society of men of let- 
ters. The vacant seat was offered to the duke of Maine, and 
the offer was accompanied by the following message : " That 
even if the number of members were full, there was not one 
of them who would not willingly die to make room for him." 

Mary. Have you nothing more to tell us, mamma, about 
Louis XIV. ? 

Mrs. M. I may tell you that the French passion for writ 
ing memoirs extended even to him. There are six volumes 
of memoirs, of which Louis dictated the substance to Pelisson, 
his historiographer, who put them in proper form, and gar- 
nished them with suitable reflections. The whole was after- 
ward revised by the king, and the manuscript contains some 
corrections in his own hand-writing. 

Ricliard. Pray, mamma, v/hat was that book I saw you 
reading this morning with so much earnestness ? 

Mrs. M. It was the life of Dkmel Huet, bishop of 
Avranches. 

Richard. Was he particularly famous for any thing ? 

Mrs. M. He was famous for having devoted his whole 
afe, from childhood to extreme old age, exclusively to study ; 
and for having been one of the principal promoters of a cel- 
ebrated edition of the Latin Classics, which, because it was 
made for the use of the dauphin, has been called the Delphin 
edition. • 

George. Is his life entertaining ? 

Mrs. M. The most amusing part is that in which he de- 
scribes the early difficulties which he had to contend with in " 
the pursuit of knowledge. He was an orphan, and waa 
brought up by an aunt, who educated him with her own sons. 
His young cousins were, it seems, poor Huet's torments. He 
tells us that their only pleasures were in hunting, running, 
jumping, and playing ; that they hated study, and could not 
bear to see him engaged with his books. " They did cv.-iy 
thing," says he, " in their power to interrupt me in my stud- 
ies : my books were stolen ; my paper torn or spoiled ; my 
chamber-door was barred, that while they were at play I 
might not be lurb'ng in my room with a book, as I was fre* 



CoNV.J LOLIS XIV, 451 

quenlly detected in doing." But this was not all. He adda, 
" In order to indulge my taste, it was my custom to rise with 
the sun, while they were buried in sleep, and either hide my- 
self in the wood, or seek some thick shade, which might con- 
ceal me from their sight, while I was reading and studying 
m quiet. It was, however, their practice to hunt for mo 
among the bushes, and by throwing stones or wet sods, or 
squirting water through the branches, to drive me from my 
hiding-place." 

Mary. How glad he must have been when he was grown 
up, and could read as much as he pleased without the foar of 
being pelted. 

Mis. M. But even then he found other interruptions not 
less annoying, for he could not succeed in always shutting 
himself up from the cares and business of life. 

Richard. How did he get on when he became a bishop ? 

Mrs. M. I fear, very ill indeed. Persons who came to 
him on business were generally told that " the bishop was at 
his books, and could not be interrupted." This made one of 
them exclaim, " Why did not the king send us a bishop who 
has finished his studies ?" At last, Huet finding, as he said, 
" the episcopal duties beyond the power of man to sustain," 
very wisely resigned them, and retired to the Jesuits' college 
at Paris, where he indulged himself in an tminterrupted de- 
votedness to books, till the ninety-first year of his age, when 
he died, leaving behind him the reputation of very great learn* 
iajf ; and, I bcheve, oi very weak judgment. 



CHAPTER XXXV 

LOUIS XV. 

(part I.) 
'Years aAer Christ, 1715—1748 




The Grand Dauphin and Ninon de L'Khci.oi. 

The crown having now, by the death of Louis XIV,, d*« 
solved on his great grandson, a child of only five years of age, 
the important question of a regency immediately occupied the 
public attention. 

The person whose rank, and whose connection with the 
royal family, gave him the strongest claim to be appointed 
regent, was Philip, duke of Orleans, who was nephew of the 
late king, and had married one of his natural daughters. In 
consequence of the renunciation which had been made by the 
king of Spain, the duke of Orleans was also the heir-apparent 
to the crown. But the character of this prince made him 
justly distrusted. Careless of all appearances, impious, and 
profligate, it was thought that no scruples would restrain him 
from paving a way for himself by any crime to the sover- 
eignty. He had been publicly accused, and probably with 
justice, of having intrigued to place himself on the throne of 
Spain, even at a time when he commanded a French army 
in that eoimtry, in aid of Philip V. He had been generally 



A.D 1715.] LOUIS XV. 453 

raspected of having given poison to his wife, and of having 
actually destroyed, by means of poison also, all the three 
daupliins, and also the duchess of Burgundy. This horrid 
suspicion M^as indeed so strong and so general, that in the 
formal procession which conveyed at the same time through 
Paris the sad remains of the duke and duchess of Burgundy, 
and of the infant duke of Bretagne, people cried out as it 
passed by the Palais Royal, which was the duke of Orleans' 
residence, " See here our good dauphin and dauphiness and 
their son. Come then and look at them, detestable poisoner !" 
Modern writers are, I believe, generally persuaded that 
these imputations on the duke were wholly unjust. His very 
character, which was the only pretense for suspecting him, is 
of itself inconsistent with any such charge. Irreligious, no 
doubt, he was, and profligate in the greatest degree, and con- 
sequently without those best and only strong securities which 
Berve to protect men — men in high stations, particularly — 
from the commission of even the most enormous crimes. But 
though he was unprincipled, he was yet easy tempered ; and 
though he might not have been deterred by the guilt, yet he 
would in all probability have shrunk from the cruelty of acts 
of blood, such as those imputed to him. An extreme distrust 
of him, however, prevailed throughout France, and if Louis 
XIV. had died two or three years sooner, when the public in 
dignation against him was at its height, he probably would 
not have obtained the regency. 

But the last two or three years had done much in his favor; 
by directing to another quarter the tide of popular jealousy. 
The due de Maine and his brother, the count of Toulouse, 
who were natural children of the late king, and had previ- 
ously been elevated to a superiority in rank above the dukes 
'V' peers of France., were, in 1714, declared to be the next 
Bnax., ^i^g crown after the princes of the royal blood, an^ 
^^ V ^^^^ privileges of the blood royal conferred on them. 
and his quLy^gg, ^^^^ which turned out to be well founded, 
thai J ^°°" ^^P-ad made a will, conferring the regency on the 
due (ie "iJi^Ae, who was a very weak man, and possessea no 
popular qualities. Hence the duke of Orleans began to be re- 
garded with favor. This favor he very skillfully increased by 
every method which it was in his power to use, and after a 
short struggle with the due de Maine, he triumphantly estab- 
lished himself in the regency. 

After the settlement of this contested affair, the first thing 
which fiiems to require our notice is the remarkable event of 



454 LOUIS XV LChip. XXX^. 

a war breaking out with Spain, notwithstanding ail the efforts 
whicli had heen used to connect the two countries, and the 
hard success with which those efibrts had heen crowned. 
Cardinal Alberoni, the Spanish minister, a man of great abil- 
ities, hut of much too grasping designs, and who miscalculated 
exceedingly his means of bringing them into effect, was a de- 
clared enemy of the regent. This crafty pohtician persuaded 
his master, Philip V., that in case of the death of the young 
king of France, the hearts of all Frenchmen would be fixed 
on him as the grandson of their adored Louis XIV., and that 
he would easUy be able to renew his claim to that crown, of 
which he was, in blood, the next inheritor. These tempting 
views Alberoni pressed on Philip with the utmost vehemence 
and pertinacity. He excited ui France itself conspiracies and 
insurrections against the regent, and sent a Spanish fleet to 
the coast of Bretagne, where the insurgents had rashly ven 
tured to take arms. But the regent's forces soon put down 
the revolt, and the Spanish fleet was obliged to retire without 
being able to effect any thing. 

The regent himself, who seems to have been rarely betrayed 
by any vice or impetuosity of mere temper into violent or im- 
politic measures, would have been very glad to have remained 
at peace with Spain. The conduct of Alberoni, however, pro- 
duced a short war, which soon terminated to the entire ad- 
vantage of France. Alberoni was disgraced, and retired to 
Italy. Spam acceded to what was called the quadruple alli- 
ance which had previously been formed between France, 
England, Holland, and Austria. Phihp again renounced, for 
himself and his descendants, all pretensions whatever to the 
succession in France ; and with the exception of certain brief 
discontents, which nearly produced a breach in the year 1725, 
the court of Madrid, under its Bourbon monarch, beca,!^-* 
from this time till the wars of the French revolution- '^^e 
else than a dependency on France. '^^- ^^ 

About the time of the conclusion of the peacf-^^_^'i® ^Y ^^ 
a bubble, called the Mississippi scheme, burst in i'heir-apparen^ 
was exceedingly similar to the South Sea scherifc*^ ^_^"|,iand. 
The projector, a Scotsman of the name of Law, was counte- 
nanced even by the regent himself; and the financial delu- 
sions which he imposed on the pubhc were carried to a greater 
and more injurious extent than the simdar delusions which 
were practiced in England. 

The only other event of the regency to which I shall think 
't necessary here to call your attention is the plague at Map 



A..D 1720.] LODIS XV. 4£.'i 

seilies, which you may perhaps have sometimes heard spoken 
of. This plague is memorable, not only for its wide-wasting 
destruction, hut also for the exalted virtue or heroism of 
" Marseilles' good bishop," as he is called by Pope, who ex 
erted himself night and day, to succor the dying, to cheer the 
despairing, and to animate the courage of those few who par- 
took with him those glorious employments. Full half of the 
inhabitants are said to have perished in this severe calamity, 
which continued from the month of May, 1720, until the end 
of June, 1721. You will be glad to hear that the good 
bishop, whose name was Belzunce, survived the fatigues and 
dangers of this terrible period. He died in 1755, at the great 
age of eighty-four. Marseilles was endeared to him, as hs, 
doubtless, was greatly endeared to the inhabitants, by the 
calamity he had there witnessed and survived. He lived 
there till his death, having refused a better bishopric which 
was offered him in the year 1723. 

On the 2d of December, 1723, the duke of Orleans, who 
could not be persuaded, even by the enfeebled state of his 
health, to alter his intemperate method of living, died, the 
victim of his own excesses, at the age of forty-nine. 

The due de Bourbon, a great grandson of the great Conde 
now became first minister to the young king, who having at 
i;ained his majority, which was fixed at the age of thirteen, 
was nominally in possession of the sovereign power, though 
as yet too much a child to be able to act for himself. The 
duke's first object was to choose for him a queen, by contribut 
ing to whose elevation to the throne he might hope to strength- 
en his own influence. His choice fell eventually on Marie 
Leczinski, daughter of Stanislaus ex-king of Poland, who had 
taken refuge in the French territories, and was now residing 
at Weissemburg in Alsace, where his wife and daughter 
shared his retirement with him. The marriage was cele- 
brated on the 4th of September, 1725; and at first Louis 
and his queen seemed to be much attached to each other. 
But he soon began to treat her with great unkindness. 

In June, 1726, the due de Bourbon was dismissed. Car- 
dinal de Fleury succeeded him as chief minister. Fleury's 
administration lasted upward of sixteen years. He possessed 
great influence over the mind of the king, and was a man of 
the most pacific character. His love of peace, the integrity 
of his dealings, and his strict economy of the finances, were' 
productive of the most beneficial efTects : but his genius wa 
better calculated to direct the helm in a caln., than to guide 



<6S LOUIS XV. Lt^HAP. XXXV. 

It in a stormy sea, and he ought to have resigned when ho 
could maintain peace no longer. In 1733, a war was excited 
by the restless spirit of many "wdio could not bear quiet, and 
were anxious for some opportunities of advancement. Fleu- 
ry's dislike to a war, which he could not approve, prevented 
him from engaging in it with vigor, and it became through- 
out a scei:e of disgrace and reverses. 

The immediate occasion which gave birth to this "vvar was 
a contest which took place for the crown of Poland. Augus- 
tus II., the successful rival of Stanislaus, died on the 1st of 
-February, 1733. Austria and Prussia declared for his son, 
but France, influenced, perhaps, in addition to other motives, 
by some romantic desire of restoring to the queen's father the 
crown he had lost, declared itself for the cause of Stanislaus. 
In Poland Stanislaus was a very popular person. He was 
elected and proclaimed king in the month of September ; but 
was compelled by a Russian army to shut himself up in the 
town of Dantzic, where it was his intention to wait for suc- 
cor from France. That succor, however, when it arrived, 
was found to consist of only 1500 men, and of course could 
not do much to withstand the enemy. Stanislaus escaped, 
and took refuge in Prussia, and Dantzic surrendered almost 
immediately afterward. The late king's son, Augustus III., 
was then elected king of Poland in his place. 

The real strength of France was in the mean time direct- 
ing itself, not toward Poland, but to the Rhine, and to Italy. 
The Austrian general on the Rhine was prince Eugene. The 
French, under the duke of Berwick, gained some advantages 
over him, and took the fort of Kehl in December, 1733, and 
the town of Pliilipsburg on the 18th of July, 1734. The 
military operations in Italy of the year 1734, under the com- 
mand of marshal Villars, who united his forces with those of 
the king of Sardinia, were also successful ; but the king of 
Sardinia was an insincere ally, who wished indeed to see the 
power of the Austrians broken, but had no desire to see that 
of France established. Comparatively little, therefore, was 
effected in this quarter. Don Carlos, however, son of PhiHp 
y. by his second wife Elizabeth Farnese, invaded Naples 
with a Spanish army, and overran and conquered it with 
but little opposition. This Don Carlos, afterward Charles 
III. king of Spain, was the father of Ferdinand VI., who 
succeeded to the crown of Naples in 1759, and who lived 
till 1S24. This was by much the most considerable event 
of the war, which was concluded by a treaty, of which 



A.O. 1735.J LOUIS XV ' «a? 

the preliminaries were signed in the month of October, 
1735. 

By this treaty the duke of Lorraine, who had taken no 
part in the war, was appointed successor to the reigning 
grand duke of Tuscany, Jean Gaston, the last of the Medici, 
who died July 9, 1737. The duchy of Lorraine, and that of 
Bar, which was annexed to it, were given to Stanislaus, who 
retained the title of king, but renounced all claim to the 
kingdom which he had lost. It was provided that these 
duchies should after his death be united to France, as a sort 
of marriage portion with his daughter Marie Leczinski. 
Thus, from an unprotected exile, whose father had sought in 
France nothing but an asylum from misfortune, this princess 
became heiress of the most valuable accession, which, with 
the exception of Bretagne and Guienne, any queen had ever 
brought to the crown. Naples and Sicily were ceded to Don 
Carlos, France surrendered all her conquests on the Bhine, 
and became a party to what was called the Pragmatic Sanc- 
tion, by which Maria Theresa, daughter of the emperor 
Charles VI., who married in 1736 Francis duke of Lorraine, 
was recognized as her father's successor, both in his hereditary 
dominions, and also in the imperial crown. The emperor's 
anxiety to have his daughter's succession thus recognized by a 
solemn compact with France was the reason why he consent- 
ed that France should acquire Lorraine. But we shall soon 
see how little dependence is to be placed on treaties, when it 
is supposed that the violation of them vidU produce any ad- 
vantage. 

The emperor Charles VI. died at the age of fifty-five, on 
the 20th of October, 1740. Maria Theresa, his daughter, 
succeeded him : but both the elector of Bavaria, and Augus- 
tus III. king of Poland, set up claims to her rich inheritance 
Other powers also made pretensions of their own. Of these, 
the king of Prussia, the celebrated warrior Frederic II., 
who had succeeded to his crown on the 31st of May, in the 
same year, was the first to show himself in the field. He 
made a claim on Silesia, entered that country with an army 
in the month of December, two months after the emperor's 
death, and in a very short time made himself master of it. 

The elector of Bavaria applied to France for assistance, 
and obtained it, though cardinal de Fleury did all he could 
lo prevent so shameful a breach of the solemn engagement 
which had been entered into with the late emperor. The 
uuited French and Bavarian army marched into Austria 

17 



«6S LUUIS XV. [Cha •. XXXV 

almost without opposition, penetrated into Bohemia, and 
took Prague. The elector of Bavaria was raised to the titla 
<ii emperor,* and Maria Theresa fled from Vienna, ana 
iOUght refuge in Hungary. Among the powerful nobles of 
siiiat chivalrous country she found the sympathy for her mis- 
fortunes which she looked for. She convoked an assembly of 
tl^e states, and, clad in mourning, and with her infant, after- 
ms-id the emperor Joseph II., in her arms, addressed the 
.Assembly with forcible eloquence, and with the more effect, 
because she spoke in Latin, a language which was still in 
use in the diets of Hungary. She presented her son to tho 
several nobles, one by one. They all swore to defend and 
protect him. At last they drew their swords, and cried out 
unanimously, " Let us die ibr our king Maria Theresa." You 
may think it remarkable that they should thus speak of the 
empress as the king, and not as the queen, of Hungary : but 
the reason is, that they were a people somewhat too rude to 
submit with a good grace to female authority, and were 
pleased, therefore, to give to their sovereign the title of king, 
even when the crown rested on the head of a woman. 

The fortune of the war was now suddenly changed. The 
Austrians kindled at the same spark of enthusiasm which was 
thus lighted in Hungary. General Kevenhuller, preceded 
by a crowd of Croats and Pandours, a set of very active but 
irregular troops, who, like the Cossacks, often excited more 
terror than the better disciplined part of the army, entered 
and laid waste the whole of Bavaria. The king of Prussia 
made a treaty for himself, by which he secured the possession 
of Silesia. The French were expelled from Bohemia, and 
were also defeated in a battle at Dettingen by an army from 
England, which had taken the part of the empres& queen 
This battle, in which George II. commanded in person, had 
no decisive results. It was fought on the 27th of June, 1743. 

Cardinal de Fleury was at this time no more. He had 
died a few months before, at the age of ninety. There is 
one anecdote of him which I do not hke to omit, because it 
bIiows that the spirit of peace and civihzation may be carried 
^•Ten into actual war. You have all of you heard of the good 
bishop Wilson, who did so much for the improvement and 
happiness of the Isle of Man. Out of respect to his charac- 
ter, Pleury gave orders that during the war with England 
which took place in his administration, no French vessel 
shoxild make a descent on that island. A like anecdote i» 

* As Charles VII. 



&.D. 1745. 1 LOUIS XY. 4^9 

recorded of the dulce of Marlborough, .who would not suflei 
his troops to injure the property of Fenelon. 

After the death of cardinal Fleury, the conquest of the Low 
Countries became with the court of France the chief object 
of the war ; and the king himself was prevailed on to join the 
army there. He marched afterward to the defense of Alsace, 
which was invaded by the Austrians under prince Charles of 
Lorraine (the brother of Francis, grand duke of Tuscany, who 
had married the empress Maria Theresa). The prince of 
Lorraine was so prompt and skillful a general, that the royal 
presence might have been insuihcient to save Alsace, had not 
the king of Prussia been persuaded to join again with France, 
Frederic saw with alarm the increase and consolidation of 
the Austrian power, and doubted not that on the very first 
opportunity new attempts would be made to wrest Silesia from 
him. Resuming therefore, the offensive, he invaded Bohemia, 
and took Prague in the month of September, 1744. This in 
vasion of Bohemia recalled prince Charles from Alsace. Fred- 
eric, after another campaign, was compelled to retire beforo 
him, and peace was restored between Prussia and Austria. 

The French araiy in the Low Countries was in the mean 
time very successful. It was commanded by marechal Saxe, 
a natural son of Augustus II. of Poland, one of the ablest 
generals whom any age has produced, and no less remarkable 
for his prudence as a commander than for the great impetu- 
osity of his natural character. On the 11th of May, 1745, 
he defeated at Fontenoy, with great slaughter, the allied army 
of England, Holland, and Austria, under the command of the 
duke of Cumberland. France gained other victories in the 
two following years, and possessed herself of almost the whole 
of the Austrian Low Countries. On the side of Italy the arms 
of Louis were unfortunate. It would take me too long to re- 
late the details of the operations there, or to give you any ac- 
count of the invasion of Scotland by Charles Edward, grand- 
son of James II., king of England, an event for which I may 
refer you to the English history. 

The elector of Bavaria, who had been elevated to the im- 
perial crown on the 24th of January, 1742, died on the 20th 
of January, 1745. He left a son of the age of seventeen, 
who soon made peace between Bavaria and Austria. The 
grand duke of Tuscany, husband of Maria Theresa, was 
elected emperor* with very little opposition, on the 13th of 
September, in the same year. Phihp V., king of Spain, diea 
* Fraacisl. j 



460 LODIS XV. [Chap. XXXV 

on the 9th of July, 1746, and was succeeded by his eldest 
Bon, Ferdinand VI. 

Negotiations for a general peace were entered into at Aix- 
la-Chapelle in the beginning of the year 1748. A suspension 
of arms was agreed to on the 11th of May, and the peace was 
concluded on the 18th of October. By this treaty France 
surrendered all her conquests in the Low Countries. The 
Pragmatic Sanction of the emperor Charles VI., which se- 
cured to his daughter the Austrian succession, was again sol- 
emnly recognized and guaranteed ; and England restored to 
France the island of Cape Breton, which had been taken in 
the year 1 745 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XXXV. 

Richard. I felt sure from the beginning that this would 
be a disagreeable reign. The beginning with that hatefiil 
duke of Orleans boded no good. 

Mrs. Markham. One of the duke's faults was that he 
was too good-natured. Nothing made him angry, nothing 
displeased him. His levity was such that he turned every 
thing into pleasantry. This humor of the regent was but too 
readily followed by a lively and volatile people like the French. 
The m^ost sacred things were made the subject of ridicule 
Duty was called a weakness ; honor, a prejudice; and deh 
cacy, affectation. 

Richard. Do you think there would have been any chance 
that Louis XV. might have made a better king, if he had lived 
in better times ? . 

Mrs. M. I do not thinlc he ever could have been a supe- 
rior character. He had none of the seeds of greatness in him. 
He had a narrow capacity, and a natural inertness of mind, 
which made every kind of serious application irksome to him. 
In his youth he detested study, and in his manhood he shrunk 
from business. 

Richard. "Were any pains taken to instruct him when he 
was a child ? 

Mis. M. Proper persons were appointed to superintend 
his education ; but you may readily imagine that it is not easy 
to make a boy learn his lessons against his will, who knows 
himself to be a king. 

Geurge. I suppose that to have flogged his majesty would 
have been little less than high treasoii 



UoNv.J LOUIS XV. '4ft 

Mrs. M. At aU events, it would have been conlraiy to 
etiquette. The duchess of Ventadour, however, his govern 
ess, hit upon the singular expedient of whipping him by proxy. 

Mary. How could she manage that ? 

Mrs. M. She procured a child, the son of poor parents, 
and of the same age with the king, to be the companion oi 
his studies; and whenever the kiiig was naughty, or said a 
bad lesson, the poor unfortunate companion was whipped in 
his stead. 

George. His majesty must have been a mean-spirited little 
wretch to have suffered it. 

Mrs. M. This kind of education was not, as you will sup- 
pose, calculated to improve either his heart or his imderstand- 
ing. The young king grew up vicious and frivolous. Like 
most ignorant people, he was extremely inquisitive about tri- 
fles. He delighted in mean gossip, and though he was as 
uninformed as a child in all the political interests of his own, 
or of any other country, he yet knew a great deal of what waa 
yoing on in private families. He had a natural lote of low 
company, and, king as he was, dehghted to pick up and re- 
peat vulgar expressions, and to be told of any scandalous or 
disgusting anecdote which was current. Notwithstanding all 
this, however, he acquired so much of the outward show of 
royalty, as to have a remarkably dignified and majestic air 
and manner. He was also remarkably handsome, and had 
the most beautiful blue eyes that ever were seen. But to re- 
turn to his education. The tutors or preceptors who succeeded 
to the office of the duchess de Ventadour were not more sue 
cessful than she had been ; and the only art the king learned 
well was the art of dissimulation, which the cardinal de Fleury 
who was one of his precepfors, has been accused, perhaps, un 
justly, of teaching him. 

Richard. Why, to be sure, it is very hard to make tutors 
answerable for the faults of their pupils. 

Mrs. M. After the king became a man, Fleury seems to 
have done all he could to check his vicious propensities. Noi 
were his efforts wholly in vain. While he lived, the young 
king's conduct was kept in some sort within the bounds of de- 
'cency. But after his death, Louis sunk into an abyss of vice 
from which he never afterward emerged. 

Mary. Pray, mamma, what became of poor old roan^xaa 
de Maintenon ? 

Mrs. M. She survi^/^ed Louis XIV. only four year*. On 
his death she retired to St. Cyr, an esti»bliiib>cpen^ v/Kich iVt 



4f,^ LOUIS XV. [Chap. XXXV 

■had founded near Versailles for the education of young ladies 
of good family but of small fortune. She there passed the 
remainder of her life in religious seclusion. Madame de 
Maintenon possessed the rare merit of being devoid of mercen- 
ary feelings. In the plenitude of her power she had never 
thought of reserving any provision for herself ; and by somo 
unaccountable neglect on the part of the king, she was at his 
death left totally unprovided for. The regent, however, who 
did not want for generous feelings, settled a pension on her, 
Baying that "her disinterestedness had made it necessary." 

RiduiTd. Will you be so kind, mamma, as to tell us some 
of the particulars of that dreadful plague at Marseilles. 

Mrs. M. This great calamity is said to have been brought 
on that city in a way in which calamities very frequently come, 
namely, by carelessness. The captain of a merchant vesseJ 
which arrived there from Syria, presuming that he had no in 
fected goods on board, neglected to observe the usual precau- 
tions. Soon after his merchandise was landed, the plague 
appeared in the city, and spread with frightful rapidity. The 
streets were filled with the unburied dead, whose putrid bodies 
added to the contagion. The terrified Marseillois sought to 
escape from the city, but the parliament of Aix had planted 
around it a cordon of troops, which prevented the possibility 
of flight. Some, however, of the wealthier and more prudent 
inhabitants had left the city at the first alarm. Those who 
.remained were in the most dreadful condition, and all their 
'energy seemed lost in despair. Four men alone possessed suffi- 
cient courage and fortitude to undertake any thing for the 
general safety. 

Mary. That good bishop, I suppose, was one of them. 

Mrs. M. He was. His office was to attend the sick in 
the hospitals In this Christian office he was assisted by an 
order of nuns,* who, instead of immuring themselves in con- 
vents, devoted their lives to nursing the sick. 

George. What good, useful creatures ! But pray, mam- 
ma, who were those other three courageous men ? 

Mrs. M. They were Estelle and Moustier, the sheriffs ol 
the town, and the chevalier Rose. Their first care was to 
remove the bodies of the dead from the streets. They caused 
a deep ditch to be dug outside the walls, and obliged the 
galley-slaves to convey the bodies there in carts. These poor 
wretches all fell victims to this dreadful occupation. Theii 
officers had some scruple in permitting them to be devoted ta 
* Called Les JiUes pieuses. 



OoNV.J LOUIS XV Ivw, 

this service of death ; hut the necessities of the «;ase prevdil- 
ed. The plague commenced in the month of May, and con- 
tinued its ravages during the whole of the summer. Tha 
hospitals were quite unequal to contain the numbers of those 
who were daily imploring admittance. A large hospital was 
erected outside of the walls ; but w^hen it was nearly com- 
pleted, it was destroyed by a violent storm from the north. 

Gecn-ge. What an unfortunate storm ! 

Wrs. M. And yet the great misfortune, as the citizens at 
first considered it, was, in fact, a providential mercy. The 
north wind had the effect of cleansing and purifying the air, 
and of abating the violence of the contagion. The disease 
did not, however, totally cease till the following summer. 
The people of this unhappy city, in addition to the plague, 
had to contend also with famine ; but the pope sent them 
vessels laden with corn to be distributed among the poor. 

George. Well, mamma, that was right ; and as you tell 
us of so many bad things, it is but fair you should tell us as 
many good tilings as you can. 

Richard. Pray is the prince Eugene of whom you spoke 
in the last chapter the same person who is mentioned in your 
histoiy of England, and who had the dispute with the duke 
of Marlborough ? 

Mrs. M. The same. His father was count de Soissons, a 
prince of the house of Savoy. His mother was niece to car 
dinal Mazarin. Prince Eugene received his early education 
in France ; but when he was about eleven or twelve years 
old, his mother, who was a very busy, meddling woman, was 
banished the kingdom, and her son with her. Eugene's lofty 
spirit, although he w^as so young, highly resented this indig- 
nity, and he declared, " that he would one day enter France 
in spite of the king." He afterward went into the service of 
the emperor, and became, as you know, one of the greatest 
generals of his time. He was upright and religious, a'ld had 
no weakness that I know of, unless, indeed, we may reckon 
as a weakness the personal pique which he entertained against 
Louis XIV., and which he delighted to show even on trivial 
occasions. 

Richard. The speaking of Louis XIV. reminds rae of 
something I wanted to ask you about. Is there not ui his 
reign some curious story of a man in an iron mask ? 

Mrs. M. A very curious story it is, and one which haa 
given rise to innumerable conjectures. A prisoner, apparent* 
ly of distinction, was confin} d for miny years in the Bastiiel 



<b4 LOUIS XV. [Chip. XXX^ 

and the greatest care was taken to conceal who he was. He 
was guarded with the utmost vigilance, and constantly wore 
a mask, not of iron, as has been commonly supposed, but of 
black velvet, stiffened with pasteboard and whalebone, and 
fastened behind the head with a padlock, to prevent the pos' 
sibility of uncovering the face. 

Mary. Well, I am glad it was not an iron mask, however. 

Riclmrd. Has it ever been found out who the man was ? 

Mrs. M. The secret was so well kept that none of his co- 
temporaries could fathom it. Invention was therefore called 
in to make up a story. The unhappy man was said by some 
to be a twin brother of Louis XIV., who, to prevent the pos- 
sibility of any dispute for the succession, had been secreted 
from his birth, and brought up in obscurity. Another con- 
jecture was, that he was the illegitimate son of queen Anne 
of Austria and of cardinal Mazarin. But the mystery seems 
at last cleared up, and the real truth brought to light, by the 
discovery of letters from Louvois to the French embassadoi 
at Mantua, and of other authentic documents. From these 
it appears that this mysterious prisoner was an Italian of the 
name of Matthioli, a minister of the dulte of Mantua. 

Richard. And what had this man done to draw on him 
such severe punishment ? 

Mrs. M. He had done no more than many a political 
rogue has often done with impunity. He was the agent of a 
secret treaty with Louis XIV., for the sale of a fortress be- 
longing to the duke of Mantua ; and he afterward betrayed 
the secret of this treaty to the duke of Savoy, by whom he 
was well paid for his treachery. 

Ricliard. WeU. ! the gratid mo7iarque would not like that, 
I suppose. But still I do not see why he should have taken 
the trouble to punish such an insignificant person in so sin- 
gular and mysterious a way. 

Mrs. M. The same thing has puzzled many wiser people 
than either you or me. The king, entertaining a high opin- 
ion of his own pohtical skill, and accustomed all his life to 
the most implicit obedience, was, I suppose, mortally affront- 
ed at being baffled and cajoled by an insignificant Italian, 
and thought it inconsistent with his dignity to pardon such 
an ofiense. By a flagrant act of treachery he got his victim 
within his grasp ; and it was then, of course, stiU more neces- 
sary to his dignity that that treachery should be concealed 
from aU the world. The history is as follows -• — Under pre- 
tense of a secret meeting with some of Louis's agents 



CoNV.J LOUIS XV. 4«« 

Matthioli was allured into the neighborhood of Pignerol. 
Here he was seized and thrown into a dungeon. Louis, nol 
contented with having incarcerated him, pursued him with a 
mean and unworthy revenge, and sent express orders to St 
Mars, the governor of Pignerol, that, " excepting the absolute 
necessaries of life, he should have nothing given him that 
might make him pass his time agreeably." The suddenness 
of his misfortune, and the severity of his confinement, appea/ 
to have affected the prisoner's intellects ; and we may hope 
that the aberration of his rea-son might lessen to him the 
sense of his calamity. 

Mary. And did they put that mask on him when first 
they imprisoned him ? 

Mrs. M. I believe not. After a time, St. Mars was pro- 
moted to be governor of the isle of St. Margaret, a state 
prison on the coast of Provence, and Matthioli also was re- 
moved there. To conceal him during the journey, he was 
placed in a chair inclosed by an oil-cloth cover, and carried by 
men who could neither see him nor hear him speak. The 
closeness of the oil-cloth cover well-nigh sufibcated him, and 
it was after tliis that the black mask was adopted, which he 
wore not only during the remainder of his journey, but for 
the rest of his life. Matthioli was an inhabitant of the isle 
of St. Margaret eleven years. His cell was lighted by a 
window, or more properly by a hole in the wall, which looked 
upon the sea. His servant, who had been made a prisoner 
with him, died in confinement in this melancholy abode. At- 
tempts were made to procure him another attendant, but no 
bribe could induce any one to accept the office. 

Ridiard. It ought, indeed, to be a powerful bribe, to in- 
duce any one to shut himself up for life with a man who was 
mad, and whose face one was never to see. 

Mrs. M. In 1698, St. Mars, and his prisoner with him, 
were removed to the Bastile. The strict order that Matthioli 
should be debarred from all indulgences was now relaxed. 
He was allowed to play on a guitar ; he was also permitted 
to attend mass ; but it was on condition that he never uttered 
a word, and soldiers were stationed with orders to fire on him, 
if he made any attempt to ispeak. 

George. I protest I never thought I could have felt so 
much pity for a rogue and a traitor as I find I do feel for this 
poor fellow. 

Mrs. M. Misfortune, like death, is a great leveler of dis- 
tinctions. After an imprisonment of twenty-four years, tliis 



LUOIS XV 



[Chap. XXXV 



unhappy victim of the pride and tyranny of liouis ended his 
miserable hfe. Providence, in mercy, perhaps, for his long 
sufferings, spared him the additional pain of any previous 
illness He died suddenly, soon after his return from mass, 
November 19, 1703. 

Jxicliard. The king, I dare say, was glad enough, when 
the poor man was dead, and he was himself no longer in fear 
of the secret being found out. 

Mrs. M. The king's jealousy continued even after his 
death. It is said that the disgusting precaution was taken 
of mutUating the face, to prevent its being recognized in case 
of disinterment. The walls of the prison were carefully 
scraped and whitewashed, to efface any writing that the pris- 
oner might have left on them ; the ceiHng was taken down, 
and the pavement of the chamber removed, lest papers or any 
other memorial should be concealed beneath the floor, or in 
the roof. Even the doors and window-frames were taken down 
and burned. 

Mary. Did any body ever see him when he went to 
mass ? 

Mrs. M. Several people saw him after he came to the 
Bastile. He is described as having been tall and well made. 
His complexion, what little could be seen of it, was very dark 
He had fine teeth, and his hair was gray. Nothing more it 
known, I believe, of his personal appearance. 




House or Matime om Sitisne. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

tOUIS XV.— IN CONTINUATION 
TYears after Christ, 1748—1774.] 




Equestrian Statdk of Louis XV. 

From the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, till the year 1756, 
France was permitted to enjoy the blessings of peace, though 
there were some contests in the interval in the East Indies, 
between the English and French factions and allies. The 
domestic state of France was embroiled by disputes among 
the clergy ; and the king, who now submitted himself entirely 
to the ascendency of a madame d'Etioles, whom he had made 
marchioness de Pompadour, had not the energy or sense to 
repress them. It is said of the pope, then Benedict XIV., 
that being quite astonished at the violence with which these 
disputes were suffered to be carried on, he wondered that they 
did not overset the government, which, he said, must surely 
be a good machine, since it was able to go of itself. In spite 
of these disputes, however, the manufactures, commerce, and 
general prosperity of the country advanced in the i'^terval 
with rapid strides. The colomes flourished, and that of St. 
Domingo in particular became exceedingly opulent and pro- 
Auetive. 

In 1755, a new war broke out. Indeed it may be said in 



468 LOCIS XV. ^Chap. XXX 

Strictness to have b/oken out scmew^hat sooner ; the French 
and English foices having come to blows in Canada, both in 
1754 and 1755. The war in Europe, however, becoming 
general in 1756 ; this is the year from which the French 
historians date its origin. It has commonly the title of the 
Seven Years' "War. 

You recollect that in the war concluded by the peace of 
Aix-la-Chapelle, France and Prussia were combined against 
Austria ; that the great object of Austria was to recover 
Silesia ; and that it was the policy of France to support the 
power of Prussia, by way of balancing that of the Austrians. 
All this system changed in the new war now entered into ; 
the most surprising feature of which was to see France and 
Austria leagued together in opposition to Prussia. The secret 
history of this new pohcy is said to have been, that Maria 
Theresa, in order to prevail on the court of France to join in 
her designs against the king of Prussia, was lavish of her 
attentions to madame de Pompadour ; and that madame de 
Pompadour, captivated by these flatteries, and angry wdth the 
king of Prussia, who was said to have spoken of her sarcas 
tically, was the effectual advocate of the Austrian interests. 
Be this as it may, a treaty with Austria was signed at Ver- 
sailles on the 1st of May, 1756 ; and France soon after placed 
at the disposal of its new ally an army of more than a hun 
dred thousand men. 

The first operations of the new war were by sea. The 
inarechal de Richelieu, at the head of a considerable army, 
sailed from Hyeres under the convoy of twelve ships of the 
line, and five frigates, commanded by the marquis de la Galis* 
soniere. The capture of Minorca, then in possession of the 
Enghsh, was the object of this expedition. The army disem- 
barked without opposition, and took possession of the tovim of 
Citadella, and also of Mahon, the principal town in the island, 
which the English, being in no great force, abandoned, and shut 
themselves up in the fort of St. Philip. The English admiral, 
Byng, with fourteen ships of the line, arrived off the island 
soon afterward. La Galissoniere offered battle, and a partial 
engagement ensued; but Byng, for some reason or other, 
sheered off, gave up the object of relieving Fort St. Philip, 
and sailed for Gibialtar. The fort surrendered on the 28th 
of June. B}Tig, as you know, was brought to trial .on hia 
return to England, and was shot for having failed in his duty 

The war on the contment was commenced by the king of 
Prussia, who undismayed by the powerful combination igainsi 



A.D. 1757.] LOUIS 3£.V 409 

him, in which Russia, Sweden, arid Saxony had un (led with 
France and Austria, dared to anticipate the attack of his ene- 
mies. He invaded Saxony, and took possession of Dresden ; 
he blockaded the Saxon army in an introached camp it had 
formed at Pirna : he defeated at Lowositz fifty thousand 
Austrians, who were on their march to the rehef of Saxony, 
and then made the whole Saxon army capitulate. 

In the following year this intrepid monarch entered Bohe- 
mia with but little opposition, and penetrated to the environs 
of Prague. Prince Charles of Lorraine, who commanded the 
Austrian army, would not abandon the city without a battle 
The Austrians for a time resisted the attack of the Prussians, 
but their positions were at length forced, and they were de- 
feated with great slaughter. On this defeat Prince Charles 
threw himself into Prague, which was immediately invested 
by Frederic. 

The operations of a blockade, however, were too tedious to 
suit the temper of this active warrior. Frederic well knew 
that, notwithstanding all his ability, he was too much over- 
matched by his numerous enemies to be able to sustain a pro- 
longed contest with any of them. There was hardly any 
risk, therefore, which he was not willing to run in attempting 
to crush the foe he was at present engaged with, and so, if 
possible, to put an end to the war. Besides prince Charles's, 
there was another Austrian army, under the able, but very 
cautious marshal Daun. Frederic, leaving a part of his army 
to blockade prince Charles in Prague, marched against Daun 
with the remainder of his forces, and attacked him in a very 
strong position at Kolin ; but was at length, after great loss, 
compelled to retreat, to raise the siege of Prague, and to 
evacuate Bohemia. 

The French court, whatever motive had determined it to 
join in exciting this war on the continent, had, of course, its 
own objects in cariying it on. Probably its greatest object 
was the conquest of Hanover. Sixty thousand men were 
accordingly marched in that direction under the command first 
of the marechal d'Estrees, and afterward of the marechal de 
Richelieu ; to whom was opposed an army hastily collected, 
and chiefly consisting of Brunswickers, Hanoverians and Hes- 
sians, which was placed under the command of the duke of 
CuiBberland. To him Frederic looked for support on that 
side ; but the duke retreated as the French army advanced ; 
and at last he signed a convention at Closter Seven, by whicL 
both parties agreed to abstain from hostilities. The posses 



170 LOUIS XV. LChap. XXXVT. 

luon of Hanover was left in the hands of the French, whc 
committed there great disorders, and levied excessive contri- 
butions. A detachment of their army, to the amount of 
twenty-five thousand men, penetrated into Saxony, after thus 
ravaging Hanover, and joined at Erfurt ar* army of the Im- 
perialists. On November the 5th, Frederic defeated this anny 
at Rosbach. This was one of his most splendid and memor- 
able victories. He then hastily returned into Silesia, and on 
the 5th of December gained another victory over the Austrians 
at Leuthen. 

Thus ended the year 1757. It would take me too long to 
give you even the briefest relation of the other exploits which 
the king of Prussia performed in the subsequent years of this 
sanguinary war. Often defeated, but never dispirited, often 
suffering from his own over-pertinacity in attempting to over- 
come insuperable obstacles, but always formidable, and full 
of resources, even in circumstances to all appearance hopeless, 
there scarcely exists, perhaps, in the history of the world, any 
instance in which any other general ever effected so much 
with means so apparently inadequate. At length, exhausted 
even by his own victories, he was on the point of falling be- 
fore Russia and Austria, when he was delivered by one of 
those extraordmary chances that are sometimes seen to 
change the fortune of nations. Elizabeth, empress of Rus 
sia, died in 17C2, and was succeeded by Peter III. This 
young monarch had been an enthusiastic admirer of the mili- 
tary talents and glory of Frederic ; he solicited his friendship, 
and restored all that Russia had taken from him. It even 
seems probable that if he had lived, he would, in his enthusi- 
astic passion for glory, have placed at the king of Prussia's 
disposal the whole power of his immense territory, and have 
proposed to engage with him, like a true knight-errant of old 
times, in some wild object of romantic ambition. 

Such visionary schemes, if they existed, were soon cut short 
by the death of the new czar, who was assassinated six months 
after his accession. His wife, Catharine II., who succeeded 
him, and who is universally supposed to have been privy to 
his murder, preserved toward all the courts of Europe a 
rigid neutrality; which, however, enabled Frederic to direct 
his who.e efforts against the Austrian?, whose progress he 
checked, and over whom, at the very end of the war, hg 
gained some closing advantages. 

But to return to the events which concerned France moro 
immediately. All thr irrst ftatesmen were anxious for pejice. 



AD 175.';] LGUIg XV 47 J 

but madame de Pompadour, who governed eveiy thing, was 
otherwise determined ; and a second treaty of Versailles waa 
contracted with Austria on December the 30th, 1757, on 
nearly the same terras with the former. 

This determination to go on with the war turned out most 
disastrously. The French army in Germany was defeated 
at Crevelt, in June, 1758 ; and, though victorious at Berghen 
in the following April, was again defeated at Minden on the 
1st of August, 1759. The campaign of 17G0 produced no 
event of importance, though the French gained a slight ad- 
vantage at Closter-camp. The war with England was still 
Tiore unfortunate. On August the 17th, 1759, the French 
admiral La Clue was defeated near Lagos, on the coast of 
Portugal, by a superior fleet under the command of admiral 
Boscawen. Marechal Conflans, who had the command of 
the Brest fleet, was defeated by Sir Edward Hawke on No- 
vember the 20th. Guadaloupe, and some other small islands 
in the West Indies, fell into the hands of the English ; and 
the French arms sustained also a signal defeat in the battle 
of Quebec, on the 13th of September. In this battle the 
French general, the marquis de Montcalm, was killed, and 
nea,rly at the same moment the English general Wolfe 
Both these officers were greatly regretted, and appear to 
have possessed equally all those estimable, as well as all those 
gallant qualities, which, when united, form the perfection of 
the soldier's character. 

In the end of 1759 died Ferdinand VI. king of Spain, and 
was succeeded by his brother Don Carlos, king of Naples, 
who now took the title of Charles III. of Spain. One of 
Charles's first acts was to enter into a treaty with the kirig 
of France, which is commonly called the Family Compact, 
by which these two kings of the house of Bourbon united 
themselves in the strictest offensive and defensive alliance, 
France hoped, by this treaty, which was signed August 15th, 
1761, to avail herself, in the war with England, of the mari- 
time power of Spain ; but its only effect was that of inflicting 
on her ally a series of disasters similar to her own. In 1761 
and 1762, the French lost Martinique, and were finally ex- 
pelled from Canada. The English also, who, in the foi-mer 
years of the war, had made descents at St. Malo and Cher- 
burg, took Belle-Isle, which they retained till the peace. 
They took also all the French possessions in the East Indies 
and took Cuba and the Philippine Islands from Spain. 

All parties however, at length feeling themselves exhaa** 



1/2 LOUIS XV. [Chap. XXXVl 

ed, preliminaries of peac3 between England and France were 
signed at Fontainbleau on the 3d of November, 1762., and a 
general peace was concluded in the beginning of the foJoAving 
year. The chief articles were, that France surrendered to 
England Canada and all its dependencies, and also several of the 
captured islands in the We.=t Indies. Minorca was restored 
to the English, and Florida given up to them. Cuba was 
restored to Spain. The king of Prussia on his part retained 
Silesia. 

The island of Corsica was annexed to France in 1768. 
The natives of that island had carried on for many years a 
contest with the Genoese, who had been at one time its mas- 
ters, but who had been of late unable to enforce their authority. 
The Genoese sold their claims to France ; and a body of 
French troops, after a spirited resistance, which was chiefly 
headed by Pascal Paoli, a native Corsican, gained full pos- 
session of it. Paoli took refuge in England, where he was 
received into the best society, and lived to be very old. 

The due de Choiseul, who had been made chief ministei 
in 1758, was disgraced and banished from court in 1770, 
chiefly through the influence of madame du Barri, a new 
mistress of the king. One of the duke's chief objects, during 
the whole course of his administration, was to raise a navy 
which might be equal to contend with that of England. He 
longed to retaliate all the maritime disgraces which France 
had suffered during the Seven Years' War, and was prepared 
to foment, by every means in his power, the discontents which 
were already beginning to spring up between England ami 
her American colonies. 

Soon after the peace of Paris the order of the Jesuits was 
suppressed in France. Of this obnoxious body, the very name 
of which has, with many persons, become almost synonymous 
with falsehood and artifice, it is very difficult to know justly 
what to think. It was by far th) most learned of all the 
orders of the church of Rome, and has doubtless always pos- 
sessed among its members many sincere and excellent men. 
An intriguing ambition, and a disposition to justify, if not to 
instigate any crimes which might be for the aggrandizement 
of their society, is the character wliich is commonly given to 
them by their enemies — with what degree of justice I do not 
pretend to say. But it is certain that at the period of theii 
suppression they were the victims, not of justice, but of ani- 
mosity, and that they have a claim on this account to ova 
sympathy and regard. The edict by which thev were sup- 



4.D 177 3 J 1.U01S XV. 473 

pressed in France was dated in the month of Novemher, 
1764, and confirmed afterward by a bull of pope Clement 
XIV., dated July 21, 1773. 

During the greater part of this reign a perpetual struggle 
was carried on between the royal authority and that of the 
parliaments. At length the crown proved completely suc- 
cessful, and established an absolute and unresisted prerogative 

You recollect how many of the direct heirs of the crown 
died prematurely in the latter part of the reign of Louis XIV. 
The same misfortune marks also the reign of his successor 
The duke of Burgundy, eldest son of the dauphin, and the 
elder brother of Louis XVI., died in 1761, at the age of 
eleven. The dauphin, his father, who possessed a very amia- 
ble character, survived him only a few years, and died De- 
cember 20, 1765. The dauphiness, to whom he had been 
most sincerely attached, and who cherished the greatest re- 
spect for his memory, died March 13, 1767. The queen's 
death followed on the 25th of June, 1768. Her father Stan- 
islaus, by whom she was tenderly beloved, had died a few 
months loefore. 

Louis, on the death of his queen, felt some moments of 
anguish ; biit he soon plunged into the most disgraceful ex 
cesses, from which he never afterward made any attempt to 
extricate himself. He died of the small-pox on the 10th of 
May, 1774, in his 65th year, after a reign of fifty-nine years. 

He married in 1725 Marie Leczinski, daughter of Stanis* 
.aus, king of Poland. By her he had two sons and eight 
daughters : 

(1.) Louis the dauphin, born Sept. 4, 1729, died in 1765. 
(2.) A son, who died in his infancy. (3.) Marie Louise 
Elizabeth, married in 1739 Philip infant of Spain. (4.) 
Anne Henriette, died 1752. (5.) Marie Adelaide. (6.) Vic- 
toire. (7.) Sophie. (8.) Louise Marie, entered a convent 
of Carmelites in 1771. 

Two others died in childhood. 

Louis the dauphin married first the infanta of Spain, who 
died July 24, 1746, leaving one daughter, who died in in- 
fancy. 

He married, secondly, 

Marie Josephe, princess of Saxony. 

By her he had five sons and three daughters : 

(1 ) Louis Joseph Xavier, duke of Burgundy, born Sept, 
13, 1751, died Feb. 22, 1761. (2.) Xavier Marie Joseph, 
due d'Aquitaine, born Sept. 8. 1753 died Feb. 22, .1754 



174 LOUIS XV. [Chap. XXXVl 

(3.) iiouis Auguste, afterward Louis XVI (4.) Louis Stan- 
islaus Xavior, count de Provence, afterward Louis XVTII. 
(5.) Charles Philippe, count d'Artois, afterward Charles X, 
(6.) Adelaide Clotilde, married the prince of Piedmont. (7.) 
Ehzabeth Philippine. (8.) Marie Zephirine, died, aged five 
years, Sept, 1, 1755. 

Louis XV. was one of the worst kings of his race. Though 
not naturally deficient either in benevolent or in pious feel- 
ings, he had neither sense nor principle to raise on this founda- 
tion any superstructure of true virtue or religion, and he stands 
\n history a most conspicuous example of the ease with v/hich 
even a good disposition, when unsustained by any strength of 
'tharacter, may sink into the most hopeless and degrading 
iabits of vice. 

In the course of this long reign there arose in Franco a 
^arge body of men of letters, who seem almost to have de- 
voted themselves to the guilty project of undermining the 
Christian faith. "What the causes were which made this 
wickedness so general it is not easy to say. The corruptions 
of the church of Rome, which was now no longer upheld in 
France by the great abilities of such men as had belonged to 
it in the reign of Louis XIV., alienated many people even 
from religion itself. That pride of heart also, which is a loo 
common, and the worst fault of our nature, and the most m- 
consistent with that humble and teachable disposition which 
was inculcated by our blessed Saviour on his disciples, catclles 
easily the spirit of infidelity. 

From these and other causes, there arose a large party in 
France of men who went in common by the title of philoso- 
phes. These united all their efibrts to destroy what they 
commonly called " fanaticism ;" but by this term, they meant 
nothing less than Christianity. The harder and the worse 
the object they proposed, the more determined they became 
in the prosecution of it ; and nothing can less deserve the 
name of philosophy than the insidious warfare by which they 
attempted to gain the evil object which they had at heart. 
To a certain extent they were, no doubt, very successful. The 
tone of infidelity spread into all companies, I might almost 
gay into aU countries, with rapidity ; and in France especially 
if it did not serve to prepare the political revolution of the 
Eubsequent reign, yet undoubtedly it aggravated all its worst 
excesses. 

Of the French writers of the age of Louis XV. Voltaira 
and Rousseau were by far the most eminent. 



CcNv.] LOUIS XV. 473 

The family name of Voltaire was Arouet. He was born 
at Paris, February 20, 1694. He was a man of dry wit, 
and of a sarcastic turn of expression, but of the most out- 
rageous and jealous vanity imaginable. He was invited tn 
Berlin by Frederic of Prussia, and staid there some time ; 
but Frederic could not long bear his arrogance, and Voltaire 
expected every where the most unlimited deference and re- 
spect. He fled from Prussia, and settled afterward at Ferney, 
in estate which he purchased near Geneva. He died at Paris, 
May 30, 1778. 

Rousseau's ybr^e was eloquence ; his writings are very im- 
passioned. His feelings seemed to follow the current of his 
imagination, and he had plainly no principle by which to reg- 
ulate them. He, too, was vain, even to a degree of insanity. 
He quarreled with every body, even with those who v/ere 
most disposed to be friendly to him, and of these, in particu- 
lar, with Hume the historian. Rousseau and Voltaire could 
never tolerate each other. Rousseau at one time came to 
London, and attracted attention there by walking about the 
streets in an Armenian costume. He was born at Geneva, 
7nne 28, 1712, and died at Ermenonville, July 2, 1778. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XXXVI. 

Richard. The people of France seem to have come to 
a pretty pass, more especially the ladies : I hope there were 
s,om,e good ones among them I 

Wrs. MarkluiTn. The queen and her four daughters wero 
women of exemplary character, but of very retired habits, 
and their example could only be seen in the limited circle to 
which they confined themselves. The dauphiness also was a 
very charming woman. She was all goodness and gentle- 
ness, and devoted her life to the fulfillment of her duties as a 
wife and a mother. 

Mary. What sort of a man was the dauphin ? 

Mrs. M. He is represented as having been an amiable 
man, whose affections had been chilled, and the powers of his 
mind depressed by the coldness of his father's behavior toward 
him. Louis always entertained a jealousy of his son, and re- 
pressed, as thinking it insincere, every demonstration of aliec- 
tion which the naturally warm heart of the dauphin prompted 
him to show. The courtiers, catching the tone of the king, 
end of madame de Pompadour, the dauphin's avowed enemy, 



me LOi IS XV. [Chap. xxxv% 

affected lo treat him with, mariced neglect. The prince, 
whose spjrits were naturally weak, oppressed by those mor- 
tifications, sank into a state of mental apathy. His health 
gave way, and he fell into a consumption. He met the ap- 
proach of death with the most cheerful tranquillity. His only 
worldly regret was on account of his son, afterward Louis 
XVI., left without a guide amid the dangers of a vicious court 
and a corrupted age. His affectionate wife, who had nursed 
him with unremitting care during the whole of his illness, 
contracted the seeds of the same fatal disorder, and soon fol- 
loAved him to the grave. 

Ricliard. Was that marchioness of Pompadour a very 
fascinating woman ? 

Mrs. M. She was handsome and bold, and contrived to 
acquire an unbounded influence over the weak and facile 
mind of the king. She was a woman of low birth, and of 
no education. She had no great talents, but had some de- 
gree of shrewdness. By living in the court she acquired an 
imposing air of dignity, but she still retained many traces of 
vulgarity in her speech and manner, which appeared the more 
striking in a court which, though it had lost much of the de- 
corum, stiU piqued itself on the elegance and refinement which 
it had acquired under Louis XIV. Madame de Pompadour 
affected to make madame de Maintenon her model, and, after 
the decease of the queen, she aimed at a marriage with the 
king. But death put an end to her projects ; and never did 
he seize a more unAvilling victim. She clung to power with 
the last remnant of life, and while lying on her death-bed, had 
her face rouged to hide her hopeless condition, and gave audi- 
ence to ministers, prmces, and courtiers. 

George. W^hy did that other bad woman, that madame 
du Barri, want to get the due de Choiseul turned out of the 
ministry ? 

Mrs. M. Because he refused to pay court to her. The 
duke retired to Chanteloup, a magnificent palace on the 
baidcs of the Loire, where he was soon surrounded by the 
best chosen and most brilliant society in France, and may 
truly be said to have enjoyed an honorable disgrace. M 
Dutens,* gives a particular description of the manner of liv- 
ing at Chanteloup, where it was the wish of the duke and 
duchess that their guests should enjoy an entire liberty. 
Every person spent his mornings as he pleased. At three 
o'clock dinner was served, but those who preferred dining in 

* In his Memoirs d'z n Voyageur qui se reposi. 



L'ONV.] LOUIS X:V. i77 

pnvate had dinner in their owia. apartments. After dinner, 
Bome walked, some conversed, some read aloud ; every one 
followed his own inclinations ; and those wearisome questions 
" Why don't you stay ?" and " Where are you going ?" were 
never asked. In the evening the duke and duchess usually 
walked, and their guests gladly accompanied them. After- 
ward, those who chose played at cards, and every one went to 
bed as early or as late as he pleased. The household was on 
a princely scale, and, including out-door and in-door servants, 
consisted of nearly four hundred persons. A second table was 
kept for people who came on business, but whose rank did not 
entitle them to u place at the first table. There was a com- 
plete establishment for la chasse, and, what was still more 
essential in a French chateau, a private theater. 

Richard. Was the loss of the duke, as a minister, much 
felt in France ? 

Mi'S. M. It was the more felt because he had very in- 
efficient successors. His dismissal was, therefore, a great 
blow to the dignity of the French monarchy, and with him 
all its political greatness disappeared for a time. But Choiseul, 
though a favorite with the higher classes, was much disliked 
by the people at large, on account of his love of war, his ex 
travagance, and his mismanagement of the finances. 

George. Were there not plenty of dukes and counts left ? 

Mrs. M, There was no scarcity of dukes or counts. In 
(act, the increase of the nobility was among the national evils, 
and the more so because an efi'eminate and degraded charac- 
ter pervaded the higher classes of society. It is, however, to 
be observed of the latter end of this reign, that the coarse- 
ness in conversation, which had in the time of the regenoi/ 
been esteemed as wit, was getting out of fashion. The phx 
losophers, as they were called, who were now beginning to 
have a great influence over the public taste, had introduced a 
Bort of sentimental cant, which proved extremely catching. 
To extol the virtues, instead of deriding them, became the 
order of the day. But the reformation went no farther. To 
profess the love of virtue was of itself sufficient, and was not 
thought to imply any obligation to practice it. 

Ridiard. Pray, mamma, did the arts and sciences sufler 
ty tliis alteration for the worse in the national character ? 

Mrs. M. I think I may venture to say that the age of 
Jiouis XV. was the age of bad taste, and that the architect- 
are, paintings, and dress of the times will fully justify me in 
making this remark A love of gaudy and frivolous ornamout 



478 LOUIS XV. [Chap. XXXVI 

was every wiere visible. Architecture was deformed and 
painting disfigured by it. Gods and goddesses and satyrs 
were introduced out of place, while shepherds and shepherd- 
esses were painted in the formal dress and the constrained 
attitudes, which la mode, that veritable demon, had intro- 
duced at court. This is particularly conspicuous in the paint- 
ings of Watteau. 

Riclmrd. Ah, mamma, I remember seeing some pictures 
of mincing ladies and gentlemen by that very painter at the 
Dulwich gallery ; and George and I laughed so loud that you 
and papa said you were ashamed of us. 

Mary. And pray, mamma, what were they like ? 

Mrs. M. The dress of the ladies was the most unbecom- 
ing that could be imagined. Paint, patches, hoops, and high 
heels, were all in their glory in the reign of Louis XV. The 
hair also was dressed in the most frightful way possible, and 
with so elaborate an attention, that to curl, friz, and distort 
it according to rule, was a labor of some hours. It is asserted 
that there were no less than twelve hundred hair-dressers at 
vhat time in Paris, and the sieur le Gros, a celebrated coiffeur, 
published a volume on hair-dressing, in which the principlea 
of the art are laid down scientifically. 

Richard. I really, mamma, begin to be out of all patienco 
with these French, and all their frivolity. 

Mrs. M. Having said so much of what is bad in this 
reign, it is but fair to mention what is good. The general 
appearance and convenienca of Paris was much improved, 
and this example was imitated in many of the provincial 
tovsTis. In Paris several fountains were made in different 
parts of the city ; the royal military school was founded, and 
other public buildings erected. A noble square also, the 
Place de Louis XV., was built, adjoining to the gardens of 
the Tuileries. In it was placed a bronze equestrian statue 
of Louis XV., on a pedestal supported by four marble statues 
representing strength, peace, prudence, and justice. This 
group gave occasion to a couplet which said that it represent- 
ed the virtues on foot, and vice on horseback.* This statue 
of Louis was destroyed during the Revolution, but I can show 
you a drawing of it. The horse has been criticised as not 
sufficiently majestic, but the fault does not, I understand, rest 
with the artist. The king expressly desired to be placed o" 
his favorite steed, and both horse and rider are likeness*^. 

* O la belle statue ! O le beau pedestal! 
Les vertus sont a pied : le vice est a cheval -' 



Oon;.j LOUIS XL 473 

George. Shall I tell you, mamma, whom I liked test of 
all the people in the last chapter ? It was that king of Prus- 
sia, He was something like a king. 

Mrs. M. He was, undoubtedly, a man much to be ad 
mired. But you will not like him so well when you kno\s 
more about him. He had great courage, a clear understand- 
ing, a decisive mind, and a long and strong head. But he 
was hard, unfeeling, and despotic, in a degree that has been 
seldom witnessed in modern times. The common eympathiea 
of humanity were dead within him. He could be just, and 
he could be liberal, because his reason told him that it was 
good policy to be so ; but he had no heart, he loved nobody, 
he cared for nobody. Even those whom he appeared to cher 
iih, and professed to serve, he would, when the whim seized 
him, overwhelm with cutting sarcasms, sneers, and neglects, 
those instruments of mental torture, the inflictions of which 
are more severe than any bodily pains. 

Mary. I suppose he had been a spoiled cliild. I have 
heard that that will make people hard-hearted I 

Mrs. M. On the contrary, the defects in Frederic's char- 
acter may \n a great measure be traced to the blight -vvhicl) 
his feelings had suffered in early life from the harsh treatment 
which he had received from his father. His father, William I., 
was a liian of a brutal and violent temper. He piqued him- 
■ielf on being a thorough soldier, and despised all refinements. 
He disliked his eldest son, and always spoke of him with con- 
tempt, as a coxcomb and a French wit, because his taste led 
him to cultivate his mind by the study of the belles-lettres 
The queen, who was sister to our George I., was an amiable, 
good woman. She was very desirous that her son should 
marry her niece, the princess Anne, of England. Frederic 
had seen his cousin, and was deeply enamored of her. The 
king at first consented to the marriage, but having taken 
some offense at George I. (I believe for calling him his brother 
the corporal), he forbade his ?on to think any more of the 
match. Frederic found this a very hard order to obey, and 
being more and more miserable at home, he, with his mother's 
approbation, concerted a plan of escape to England. But uu 
luckily the plan was discovered, and Frederic, and his friena 
and confidant, the baron de Catt, were seized in the moment 
of escape, and thrown into prison. The king's first impulse 
was to put his son to death, and his life was saved only by 
the intervention of the Austrian embassador, who declared 
that, according to the laws of the Germanic body, the pniicfl 



180 LOUIS XV. [Chap. XXXVl 

of Prussia was under the safeguard of the empire. "William, 
linding lie could not take his son's hfe, inflicted oil him a 
most horrible revenge. He ordered a scafibld to he erected in 
front of his prison windows, and caused his unfortunate friend 
to be decapitated before his eyes. The prince fainted away 
at this horrible spectacle, and it was with difficulty he could 
be brought to himself again. 

Mary. I hope his hard-hearted father did not keep him m 
prison after that ? 

Mrs. M. He was kept in close confinement for three years 
At the end of that time, William, capricious and sudden in all 
his resolutions, took it into his head to release him. He had 
him brought from prison, and placed behind his mother's chair, 
while she was engaged at cards. The imprisonment of her 
son had been a severe affliction to the queen, who had often 
interceded for him as much as she dared. You may imagine, 
therefore, what were her feelings, when she turned round and 
unexpectedly beheld him. 

Richard. There was more of cruelty than kindness in 
this contrivance of the king's, for the poor queen might have 
died of surprise. , , . 

Mrs. M. In 1740, William died, and Frederic became 
king, and having been in his own person so great a sufierei 
from tyranny, he acted as if he thought that he had acquired 
the greater right to be a tyrant himself. 

Mary. Ah ! mamma, if he had but recollected how much 
better it is to do as we would be done by I 

Mrs. M. That Christian maxim had, I fear, but little to 
do either with the practice of Frederic or vidth his creed. He 
had entangled himself in the mazes of the new French phi- 
losophy, and was a professed infidel. 

Mary. Did he ever marry the English princess ? 

Mrs. M. No. He married a princess of Brunswick, and 
treated her with neglect. The happiness of domestic life was 
quite unknown to him. He lived only for the public, and 
though he divided his time between war, literature, and the 
government of his kingdom, the same unalloyed desire of fame 
was the motive which prompted these varied pursuits, and en- 
grossed all his faculties. He followed rigidly the rules he had 
laid down for liis own conduct, and required the most exact 
obedience in others. He was extremely methodical, both in 
the afiairs of state and in his studies. He read a great deal, 
and divided his books intc two classes The first class con- 
sisted o^ the Lghter works of the day, which he read only 



.7oNV.] LOUIS XV 481 

once ; the second, of books of established merit, to which he 
wished to give repeated attention. Of each of these select 
works he had five copies, one for each of the five palaces he 
used to inhabit. Thus, when he. removed from one palace to 
another, he had only to make a note of the volume and page 
he left ofi^ at, to be able to resume the perusal, without hav- 
ing to carry his books about with him. 

Richard. Do you know what these favorite books were ? 

Mrs. M. They were not always the same. New books 
would gain admittance, and the old ones would go out of 
favor. But among the standards were the French transla 
tions of the classics (for Frederic knew little Latin and no 
Greek), and the plays of Corneille, Hacine, and Moliere. Our 
old acquaintance, Henault's history, had also a place in his 
select library. 

George. I can not comprehend how Frederic could find 
time to read so many old books, and new books, besides fight- 
ing all those battles, and looking after the affairs of his- 
kingdom. 

Mrs. M. I have already said that he was very methodi- 
cal, and that will in great measure account for his finding 
time for every thing. 

jRAchard. In that respect he resembled Louis XIV. 

Mrs. M. Frederic was in most respects greatly superior 
to Louis. He was no lover of pomp and etiquette, and gave 
little of his time to trifles. For instance, the dress of a coui-tiei 
was to Louis almost an affair of state, while to Frederic it 
was a matter of the utmost indifference. One day, some 
person just arrived from a long journey made an apology for 
appearing in liis traveling dress. The king rebuked him by 
saying, that all he wanled of him was his head, and that as 
long as he brought that, he might come in whatever dress he 
pleased. 

Mary. Pray, what sort of dress did the king wear him- 
self? 

Mrs. 31. His dress was never splendid, and not often new. 
He commonly wpre a blue military uniform, a small wig with 
a long queue, and a little tliree-cornered cocked hat. He was 
never seen without high-topped boots. In his latter years he 
would indulge himself, when he was indisposed, in wearing a 
robe de chambre ; but even then he was seldom seen without 
his cocked hat, and never without his boots. 

Mary. He must have been a droll figure. 

Mrs. M. There was so much majfsty in his eye and i» 
X 



182 LOUIS XV L^HAP XX XVI 

meanor, and lie was so really great, that no singularity of dress 
could matfe him look ridiculous. In the memoirs of coun'; 
Scgur, a French gentleman, which have been lately published, 
there is an account of a private audience which he had with 
Frederic. " I examined," says the. count, "vvdth strong curi- 
osity this man, great in genius, small in stature, and almost 
bent down imder the weight of his laurels and his long labors. 
His blue coat worn out like his body, his long boots that went 
higher than his knees, his waistcoat stained with snuff, formed 
a singular and yet noble appearance. The fire of his eyes 
showed that his mind had not decayed with age." 

Mary. I don't think I could ever have admired his dirty 
waistcoat. 

Mis. M. Snuff was the only personal gratification in 
which he indulged to excess, and I was going to say that anuff 
boxes, of which he had an incredible number, were his only 
vanity. But he was extremely vain of his wit, and never 
could control himself in the display of it. No one, when in 
his presence, could feel himself secure from its attacks, which 
were the more painful, because the arrows of his satire were 
generally barbed by malice. 

Mary. Well : my brothers may call him a very great 
man if they choose ; but for my part I don't hke him at all. 

Mrs. M. The only Hving creatures to whom he was uni- 
formly kind were his dogs. He had a favorite breed of very 
small grayhounds, and had some of them always with him. 
When he traveled, and even when engaged in war, hs 'nouli!! 
carry one of these little animals in his arms. 



CHAPTER XXX VI I 

LOUIS XVI. 

(PART I.) 

[Years after Christ, 17T«— 1789.] 




Tas Babtile. 

Louis XVI. v/as about twenty years of age, -when, on lua 

grandfather's death, he succeeded to the throne. He had 
married, May 16, 1770, Marie Antoinette, archduchess of 
Austria, one of the daughters of Maria Theresa. Nothing 
could be more amiable than the new king's natural disposi- 
tion : he was pious and tolerant, of great industry and appli- 
cation, particularly in financial affairs ; and sincerely anxious 
to promote the happiness of his people, by introducing into thr 
system of government many improvements and alteration!" 
which were in themselves desirable, or which the spirit of 
the times appeared to require. 

liouis, however, though of very amiable dispositions, had a 
weak and irresolute mind. One of his first acts v/as to re- 
establish the parliament, which had been suppressed in the 
latter part of the reiga oi liis predecessor. The management 
cf the finances he placed in the hands of M. Turgot, a ma a 



184 LOUIS !CV1. [Chap. XXXVn 

of great and enlightened abilities, who saw plainly both lh« 
<vils wiiich had been produced by the improvident system 
which had before been acted upon, and also the true principles 
on which to remedy them It is thought that this minister 
did not sufficiently consult the wishes and opinions of the 
country in general, and the timid king, either alarmed by 
some of his measures, or sv/ayed by the artful instigation of 
his enemies, dismissed him in the year 1776. Soon after hi? 
dismissal, the effective business of his office was intrusted to 
M. Necker, a Swiss, and a Protestant, who is supposed to 
have been a less able man than Turgot, but who was much 
less obnoxious. 

In the mean time the differences between the English and 
their North American colonies grew into a war which was 
destined to extend into almost every portion of the world. It 
was the policy of France to foment these dissensions. Louis, 
both as an honest and as an amiable man, and probably also 
from the repugnance which we may suppose him to have felt, 
as a king, to encourage subjects in resisting their government, 
was exceedingly unwilling to embark in this war. But he 
was carried along, almost in spite of himself, by those ambi- 
tious statesmen who thought that the time was now come to 
strike with advantage at the power of England, and to trans- 
fer to France the naval and commercial superiority which 
that rival nation had for a long time possessed. The French 
marine, through the efforts of the duke de Choiseul in the 
latter part of the former reign, and of M. de Sartine in the 
early part of the present, was nearly equal in force to that of 
England, and more than equal to it, allowing for the neces- 
sary occupation of a considerable portion of the English navy 
in the war with America. Under these circumstances thih 
war between France and England became almost wholly 
maritime. 

In December, 1777, the preliminaries were signed at Parir 
of a treaty between France and the United States of Amer- 
ica. This treaty was equivalent to a declaration of war with 
England. The first action of any importance was fought off' 
fJshant on the 27th of July, 1778, between a French fleet of 
'hirty-two ships of the line, commanded by the count d'Or- 
villiers, and the English fleet of thirty ships of the line, com- 
wianded by admirals Keppel and PaUiser. This action waH 
indecisive. Not a single ship was taken or sunk on either 
Bide. But the French seemed to think it a great matter to 
have been able thus to contend on nearly equal terms with a 



A.D. 1779. ) LOUIS XVI. 43» 

nation which had been so long master of the sea. The Eii 
ghsh on their side were much dissatisfied, and a long series of 
mutual accusation aiii recrimination ensued between their 
two admirals. The count d'Estaing, with twelve ships of the 
line, had been dispatched in April to the coast of America. 
Thence, after some time, he proceeded to the West Indie*, 
where the marquis de Bouille, governor of Martinique, had 
taken Dominica from the English. The English in their turn 
had taken St. Lucia. D'Estaing made an attack on St. Lu- 
cia, but was repulsed with great slaughter. 

In the following year France was joined by her ally Spain. 
The combined fleets of these two countries amounted together 
to sixty-six ships of the line, besides frigates and other smaller 
vessels. The count d'Orvilliers was commander-in-chief. 
These fleets entered the British Channel, unseen by Sir 
Charles Hardy, the English admiral, who was on the watch 
for them at its entrances, -with, some say thirty-five, and some 
thirty-eight, ships of the line, and who, it was apprehended, 
might have prevented their junction. For a time they threat- 
ened an attack at or near Plymouth ; and the English, who 
knew that large bodies of French troops were assembled on 
the opposite coast, were veiy apprehensive of an attempt at 
invasion, now that their enemies, Avhom they had so long tri- 
umphed over at sea, appeared their superiors even on that 
element. The count d'Orvilliers, however, seemed to fear the 
consequences of an attack on Plymouth, or of any similal 
operation, while the English fleet, although inferior to his own, 
remained entire. He took, near Plymouth, one 64 gun ship, 
which mistaking his fleet for the English, sailed into the mid- 
dle of it unawares ; and he then retired toward the mouth of 
the Channel, for the purpose of intercepting Sir Charles Hardy 
on his return. 

The English admiral, who had been long retarded by con 
trary winds, found himself at length able, on the last day of 
August, to enter the Channel. The combined fleets which ho 
had thus passed by, turned and pursued him as far as Ply 
mouth, and then went to Brest, without eflecting any thing 
of importance. There probably was never any maritime 
spectacle more imposing in itself, or moi'e mortifying to the 
English, than to see these great fleets, the pursuing and the 
pursued, in their course up the Channel. I have conversed 
with persons wlio saw them passing the Lizard Point, 
and who told m.i that the sea seimed to be quite covered 
with ships, and that the foremost was nearly out of sigliJ 



ide LUUIS XVI. [Chap. XXXVn. 

to tiie eastward, wlien the hindermost became visible in tia« 
west. 

In this year, in the West Indies, the French fleet, under 
comte d'Estaing, took the islands of St. Vincent and Grenada, 
and had an indecisive engagement with admirals Byron and 
Barrington. D'Estaing afterward made an unsuccessful at- 
tempt on Savannah in Georgia, which was in the possession 
of the English, and then, after sailing again into the West 
Indies, where he left a part of his fleet, proceeded with the 
remainder to Europe. 

The chief events of the year 1780 were, that on the 16th 
of January, admiral Bodney, who was on his way to relieve 
Gibraltar, which had been blockaded ever since Spain had 
declared war, defeated a Spanish fleet of eleven ships of the 
line, under the command of Don Juan de Langara. He then 
proceeded to Gibraltar, without opposition, and afterward to 
the West Indies. He had there three engagements with the 
comte de Guichen, who had succeeded the comte d'Estaing, 
but none of these had any important results. The French 
and Spanish fleets w@re united, and possessed in those seas a 
decided superiority over any force which could be brought 
against them. 

In 1781, the comte de Grasse took the command of these 
fleets, and on the 28th of April had an engagement with ad- 
miral Hood, the result of which was, to bring Tobago into 
the hands of the French. The English suffered several other 
losses in that quarter. They were involved also soon after- 
ward in a war with Holland, and an indecisive action between 
the Dutch and the English fleets was fought in the North 
Sea, near the shoal called the Dogger-bank, on the 5th of 
August, 1781. 

On the 12th of April, in the year 1782, the comte do 
Grasse had, ofi" the island of Dominica, another action with 
admiral Rodney. The English had thirty-seven ships of the 
line, the French thirty-four. The compte de Grasse, a man 
of the highest courage, was on board the Ville de Paris, a 
ship of 110 guns, which was a present to the French king 
from the city of Paris. Hardly any ship, perhaps, was ever 
fought more gallantly, but the French were at last totally 
defeated ; the Ville de Paris and four other ships of the line 
were taken, and one ship was sunk. The slaughter v/as ter- 
rible, and the more so because the fleet had on board a body 
\»f 5500 troops. On the I9th of the same month, two more 
"-^ere captured by Sir Samuel Hood, who had been detached 



^.D. 1783.] LOUIS XVI. 487 

from admiral E/odney's main fleet, and two more about th« 
eame time ofi'Ushant, by admiral Barrington. 

The English were much elated with these successes, but 
their exultation was considerably damped by the loss of some 
of their principal prizes, and among them of the Ville de Paris, 
in a violent storm which overtook the fleet on its way to En- 
gland after the action. "When the ViUe de Paris was last 
seen, she was weathering the gale with apparent success, but 
she was never heard of more. 

On September 13th, a formidable attack was made on Gib- 
raltar, but it failed completely. The besiegers were com- 
manded by the due de Crillon, a French ofiicer in the service 
of Spain, and a large body of French troops served under him. 
Among them were the comte d'Artois, the king's brother, and 
the duke of Bourbon. 

Under these circumstances, negotiations for peace were en 
tered into on less unequal terms than might have been ex- 
pected, in a case where England alone had to contend with 
€0 many powerful adversaries. A treaty between England 
and the United States having been previously settled, prelim- 
inaries of peace between the powers at war were signed at 
Versailles, January 20, 1783. France and England restored 
mutually their respective conquests, with the exception that 
England gave up to France the islands of St. Lucia and To- 
bago in the West Indies, the estabhshments on the river 
Senegal, and some other forts in Africa, together with some 
small districts in the East Indies. All that I need say here 
of the treaty between England and Spain is, that Spain re- 
tained possession of Minorca,which, after sustaining a severe 
siege, had finally been obliged to capitulate to a united 
French and Spanish army, on the 4th of February, 1782. 

Soon after the conclusion of this general peace, the internal 
difficulties of the French government were seen sensibly to 
increase. Financial embarrassments seemed to be at first 
the most pressing evil. The expenses of the war had added 
greatly to the public debt, and the privilege possessed by the 
nobles and clergy of holding their estates free from the pay- 
ment of taxes, exceedingly diminished the national resources, 
' and naturally aggravated the discontents of the people. 

M. Necker had been dismissed in 1781. In the end of 
1783, M. de Calonne was appointed minister. He at length 
found it necessary to propose to subject to taxation the whole 
of the landed property of the kingdom, including that of the 
Bobles and clergy. 



i88 LOUIS XVT. [Chap. XXXVIl 

This could Mot be done, however, without the consent 
either of these bodies themselves, or at least of sone greai 
national council, the authority of which would have decisive 
weight with all parties. The assembling of the States-Gene 
ral appeared, under these circumstances, the most natural 
and constitutional resource. But that body had not met 
since 1644, and both the king and the minister must have 
feared to encounter, in the existing state of the country, the 
stormy discussions which would certainly arise in it if assem- 
bled. For it is to be observed that, at this time, the people 
not only suffered many grievances from the actual despotism 
both of the government and of the nobles, but that the princi 
pies of liberty, which made them more sensible of these griev- 
ances, were very generally canvassed and popular. The 
ability of England (a far less populous and fertile, and far 
less extensive country) to support with ease a much larger 
debt than that which pressed on France so heavily, was just- 
ly ascribed to its free constitution. The interest taken in the 
late war in America had diffused an enthusiasm for republi- 
ean theories ; and rnany writers, E-ousseau in particular, had 
decked them out with a seducing brilliancy. 

In this state of opinion, Calonne reasonably dreaded the 
©onsequences which might result from assembling the States- 
General. The parliaments appeared determined to support 
the exclusive interests of the privileged classes. He had no 
resource, therefore, but to convene the Notables : an assembly 
consisting of a number of persons summoned from all parts of 
the kingdom, chiefly selected from the higher orders of the 
state, and nominated by the king himself The Noiables had 
been convened by Henry IV. and by Louis XIII. They now- 
met on the 22d of February, 1787. The number of mem- 
bers was 144. This assembly, however, would not listen to 
the measures which were proposed by M. de Calonne ; and 
that minister, finding the tide set against him, was obliged to 
resign his office on the 9th of April. About a month after, 
M. de Briexme, archbishop of Toulouse, afterward archbishop 
of Sens, was appointed his successor ; but the Notables still 
remained impracticable, and consequently were dissolved oj» 
the 25th of May. 

The only resource for money, without convening the States- 
Geneial, was now to raise it in the ordinary way by royal 
edict ; which edict could not be passed without first going to 
the parliament for registration. This the parliament, on tha 
present occasion, refused ; and when the king, by holding a 



A.D 1788.J LOWS XVI. 489 

Bed of Justice, C(?mpelle<l them to register tae edict, tliej 
made strong remonstrances, and declared the registration 
illegal. They also petitioned that the States- General might 
be assembled. On this the parliament was banished te 
Troyes in Champagne, but was again recalled in September. 

In 1788, after farther struggles with the parliament, M. 
de Brienne resigned his oiEce, M. Necker was recalled, and 
again appointed chief minister ; and with his advice it was 
at last determined to convoke the States-General on the 1st 
of May in the following year. A new convention of Notables 
was assembled in November, to determine the method by 
which the States should be elected, and other questions as to 
the composition of that great body. 

The first question was, whether the States, when con- 
vened, should meet in one assembly, or in three separate 
chambers, or, as was said, whether they should vote by heads 
or by orders. Another question was, whether the deputies 
of the third estate should be only equal in number to each of 
the other two orders severally, or whether they should be 
equal to those of both orders conjointly. In the previous 
meetings of the States-General, which had taken place in 
remote periods of the French history, neither of these ques- 
tions had been clearly decided, precedents being to be found 
on both sides. They were both of them questions of great 
importance. If the three estates met in separate chambers, 
and any measure to be adopted must have a majority in all, 
or at least in two of them (which was the plan proposed in 
case of their separation), it would appear easy for the clergy 
and nobles, whose interests were in most respects similar, to 
coalesce against the commons. And it is plain, on the othei 
hand, that if they sat in one chamber, the commons would 
have a great ascendency over the other orders, particularly if 
it had also as many deputies of its own as those of the othej 
two orders united. Even without this double representation, 
the ascendant of the commons would probably be quite deci- 
sive, if all the orders met in a single chamber. This would 
be the case, partly, because very many of the nobles, the 
duke of Orleans more particularly, were disposed to seek pop- 
ularity, for the sake of converting it to their own aggrandize- 
ment ; partly, because among the deputies of the clergy, a 
great number would necessarily be parish priests or cures, of 
whom, in all countries, a very large proportion is always 
taken out of the popular body ; partly, and principally, bt;- 
cavise many pfrsons of all ord<>rs were become converts t«r 



t»a LOUIS XVI. [Chap. XXX VIX 

popular principles. The king, at length, without deciding 
the question whether the States should dehberate, or not, in 
separate chambers, conceded the double representation of the 
commons. 

The States opened at Versailles on the 7th of May, 1789 
The deputies of the clergy were in number 291, of whom 
205 were cures : those of the nobles, 270 : those of the third 
estate, 584. Nothing could be more august than the first 
opening of this assembly. The king delivered a short speech 
from the throne, in which he congratulated himself on thua 
meeting his people, and expressed a hope that this epoch . 
might become forever memorable from the happiness and 
prosperity which would succeed it. To judge from the mere 
spectacle which was here exhibited, the fondest hopes might 
be cherished that a bright day of happiness was now dawning 
on France. The king desired most truly his people's welfare. 
Was it possible that the representatives of the people them- 
selves could fail to point out to him the best way of attain' 
ing it ? 

Alas I all persons who indulged this pleasurable anticipation 
were destined to experience the bitterest disappointment. 
The king and his ministers were men wholly incompetent to 
guide the debates of such a body as they had assembled. 
All real strength was in the popular party Of the first lead' 
ers of this party many were men of good intentions, bnt they 
almost all of them wanted practical wisdom ; and it soon 
appeared evident that it was unprepared and unequal to pur- 
sue steadily, and to useful purpose, any consistent object or 
principle. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XXXVIl 

RicJiard. Alas! poor Louis! how sorry I am for him. 
vVhat a pity it was that he had not some wise and good coun- 
sellor to tell him what to do for the best. 

Mrs. Markham. He would have been incapable, I fear, 
of benefiting even by the best advice. His excessive timidity 
(the effect of his too confined education) occasioned in him a 
want of confidence both in himself and others, and put it out 
of his power to act with candor or firmness. The misfor- 
tunes of his hfe may be chiefly attributed to this weakness. 
In all other respects he was an excellent man, and he was th* 
inlv kins: of France, since Henry IV., who had shown anv 



C.NV.] LOUIS XVI. 491 

regard for the real liiippiness of his people. But the parallei 
can. go no farther. Louis, though superior to Heniy in tha 
purity of his private life, was his inferior in all popular quali- 
ities. Shy and awkward in his manner and air, he could not, 
like Henry, captivate tne multitude by the grace and dignity 
of his demeanor, nor. by his ready address : nor could he over- 
awe them by his promptness and decision. He was clumsy 
in his person, inelegant in his gait, careless and untidy in his 
dress, and though his features were good, his countenance was 
heavy and unpleasing. He did not look- like a king ; and the 
French, who of all the people in the civilized world are the 
most governed by the eye, soon lost their respect for him. His 
good quahties were thrown away upon them. His benevo- 
lence and kindness of heart they attributed to weakness, and 
his lenity to cowardice. 

George. It should seem, then, that the French would 
rather have a fine gentleman than a good man for their king. 

Mrs. M. There were some few who could appreciate his 
real worth. The marquis de Bouille says of him in his Me- 
moirs, " In the midst of the most corrupt court, Louis XVI. 
led an uncorrupt life. In the midst of irreligion and atheism, 
he preserved a pure and enlightened devotion, and was per- 
sonally economical amidst the most unbridled luxury." 

Mary. I really think the French were unreasonable not 
to be contented with such a king as that. 

Mrs. M. The French had long been used to the blaze and 
flutter of a gaudy court, and could not reconcile themselves to 
a monarch who preferred the simple habits and amusements 
of private life. The queen also greatly shocked them by the 
contempt with which she treated those unmeaning ceremoni- 
als which had been introduced by Louis XIV., and which like 
his ghost, still haunted the court. 

George. 1 do not wonder at her. I am quite certain that 
if I had been in her place I should have done the same. 

Mrs. M. It was very natural that a young and lively 
princess should find the court formalities extremely irksome. 
Still she was very unwise to show her dislike to them. She 
was the first queen of France who admitted gentlemen into 
Iier court parties : but her greatest happiness was to abandon 
the court altogether, and to retire with a chosen circle of 
feiends to her little farm at Trianon ; M'here, dismissing tha 
queen, she would assume the farmer's wife, and, attired in 
a simple dress of white muslin, would employ herself in hei 
j'airy and garden Eve ry thing here was supposed to be 'O 



LOUIS XVI, 



LOiiAP. XXXVll 



imitation of an English farm, but it was more so in appeat- 
anue than reahty. The thatched building which looked on 
the outside hke a bai n, proved on entering it to be a u elegant 
ball-room, and every thing else was in the same taste. 

Richard. To my way of thinking, this English farm must 
have been a mighty silly sort of a pastime. 

Geai-ge. For my part, I am always glad when poor kings 
and queens can find any nice, comfortable amusements. 

Mrs. M. The French thought of Trianon very much as 
you do, Richard ; but there was nothing which so much low- 
ered the queen in their eyes, as her evening walks on the 
terraces of Versailles. These terraces were used as a public 




TssK^czi; or VERSAivLia. 

promenade. They were open to every respectably dressed 
person who chose to walk there, and in the summer evenings 
were in general thronged with people. The queen dehghted 
to mingle in the crowd, and because she wore a mask, would 
fancy herself unknown. But her gxace and dignity betrayed 
her through her disguise, and she was often exposed to imper- 
tinences from persons who would not, except for her incognito, 
have presumed to address her. Nor was this the worst. 
These garden adventures gave opportunities to her enemies 
of cruelly, and I believe most undeservedly, aspersing her 
character. But although she was fully aware of this, and 
was often importuned by her real friends to forego these even 
ing walks, she could not be prevailed on to do so, persisting 
ihat there could be no harm in them since her intentions wms 



CONV. 1 



LOUIS XVI. 



49! 



innocent. She forgot that every station has not only its owr, 
pecuhar duties, but also its own amusements, and that -what 
was proper enough for a private gentlewoman might he im- 
proper or impolitic in a queen of France. Unhappily, almost 
all her amusements were of a sort that compromised her dig- 
nity. Private theatricals were at that time a universal passion 
in France, and to be able to act was an accomplishment nc 
less essential to a lady of any pretensions than to be able to 
dance. The queen caught the general mania : she had a 
private theater, and though a very indifferent performer, would 
frequently exhibit herself on the stage. It is some excuse, 
however, for her folhes, that she was only fifteen when she 
married. She was very beautiful, thoughtless to a degree of 
childishness, and willful to an excess of obstinacy. Her edu- 
cation had been exceedingly neglected, and her mind was 
totally uninformed. She had been taught some few accom- 
plishments, but excelled in none. Conscious of her own 
ignorance, she disliked knowledge in other women, and it is 
said that sense and information were always a bar against her 
favor. It is certain that the two ladies who enjoyed her ex- 
clusive friendship were both of them, though amiable, sweet 
tempered, and of irreproachable characters, women of verj 
inferior capacities. 

Mary. Pray, who were these ladies ? 

WIrs. M. The princesse de Lamballe, and the duchesse do 
Poliffnac. Marie Antoinette lived to lament her own defi- 




Ri'iNS OF Marie Aktoinktitl's TArM ».t Tv/n^^* 



494 LOUIS XVI. [Chai-. XXXVU 

ciencies, and to observe, "What a resource in the casualties 
of life is a well informed mind I" Her own defects of char- 
acter were sufficiently apparent to all the world, and soon 
deprived her of the respect of the public. Her amiable qual- 
ities were seen by those only who knew her intimately. Her 
Tianners were singularly engaging and fascinating to those she 
iked, and with whom she could feel at her ease. She wa« 
warm in her friendships, and was benevolent and tender- 
hearted almost to an excess ; but her feelings were under no 
regulation, and she attempted neither to control nor disguise 
them. Her resentments were also as warmly expressed as her 
friendships, an unreserve which occasioned her many personal 
enemies. 

Richao'd. Did the king follow the same sort of life with 
the queen ? 

Mrs. M. Out of complaisance to her, he partook some- 
times in her amusements, " but in general," says M. Lacre- 
telle, "he lived in the midst of his court like an indulgent 
father who tolerates the diversions of his young family." His 
own favorite employments were of a more serious nature. He 
apphed himself, sedulously to all the details of business. He 
was a great reader, and had an extraordinary knowledge of 
geography. He was also a good mechanic, and had no greater 
' pleasure than to shut himself up in a room he called his work- 
shop, and amuse himself with a common workman of the name 
of Gamin, in making locks and keys. 

Mary. And how did the king's two brothers employ them- 
selves ? 

Mrs. M. I do not know that Monsieur joined in the king'a 
amusements, but he very much resembled him in character 
and appearance. He was grave and studious, waS fond of lit 
erature, and even occupied himself in writing, under a feigned 
name, for the periodical papers of the day. When a boy he 
had the reputation of being the cleverest of his family. There 
is a story that when he and his brothers were children, a dep- 
utation was sent from the country with an address to them 
on some public occasion. The orator addressed the dauphin 
as being the eldest, and began with a flaming compliment on 
his talents and progress in learning. On this, Louis inter* 
rupted the spokesman, and pointing to the comte de Provence 
(as Monsieur was then called,) said, " Sir, you must mean my 
brother, the comte de Provence ; he is the clever boy." 

George. I am sure Louis was an honest boy, whether 1m 
was clever or not 



Con v.] LOUIS XVI. 43* 

Mrs. M. -A:id the same might he said of him when a man 
Whether clever or not, he was very honest. The comte 
d'Artois (afterward Charles X.) was very unlike his brothers. 
He was handsome, gay, and lively : he loved frivolous diver- 
sions much more than serious employments, and partook in 
all the queen's amusements, and encouraged her in her love 
of dissipation. 

Mary. The Revolution in France is very difficult to un 
derstand. I don't quite comprehend what was the first be- 
ginning of it. 

Mrs. M. I have already endeavored to explain- to you 
that the disorders in the finance had paralyzed the powers of 
government ; an evil which the inefficient measures of the 
king and his bewildered ministers in vain essayed to remedy. 
The higher ranks of the nobility, excepting those who were 
of what was called the queen's party, were much estranged 
from the court, chiefly in consequence of the unpopular habits 
of the king and queen. The provincial nobles, who were by 
far the most numerous, were, with few exceptions, miserably 
poor and uneducated. Shut up vidthin the pale of their rank, 
they were excluded from the law, from commerce, and from 
many of those roads to wealth which were open to plebeians 
Their titles and their exemptions from taXi*tion were their 
only distinctions. These distinctions, however, made them 
look down with contempt on their unprivileged though richer 
neighbors, by whom they were in their turn despised for their 
poverty and pride. In addition to all these evils, the false 
philosophy of the times had weakened the influence of reli- 
gious principle throughout France. Thus the cords were 
loosened which bind society together, and very slight impulses 
were sufficient to burst them asmider. The court party as- 
cribe the first popular distm-bances chiefly to the machinations 
of the duke of Orleans, who at any rate encouraged and heartily 
joined in them. 

Ridiard. I should have thought that, as a prince of the 
blood, he ought to have supported the royal cause, instead of 
turning against it. 

Mrs. M. The duke of Orleans was both a wrong-headed 
and an unprincipled man. He was great grandson of thc> 
regent, and inherited some of his ancestor's talents, most of 
Lis vices, and very few, if any, of his captivating qualities. 
He hated the queen, because she had been too frank and un- 
guarded to conceal her disapprobation of his conduct, and 
gratified his malice by attacking ler character in every possi- 



196 LOUIS XVI [Chap- XXXVIJ 

ble way. Most of the abusive pamphlets, which, in the be- 
ginning of the Revolution, were circulated against the queen, 
could be traced to his palace, and the celebrated madame 
Genlis, who was then governess to his children, is much be- 
lied if she is not the author of some of them. Not contented 
with thus vilifying the queen, he is said to have aimed also 
at dethroning the king, in the hope to obtain, if not the throne 
itself, at least the nomination of lieutenant-general of the 
kingdom. But his desires surpassed his means of accomplish- 
ment. He had no character, and no power of any kind, ex 
cept what his immense wealth and his undaunted wickedness 
gave him. And while he deceived himself with the idea that 
in compassing the ruin of the royal family he was at once 
gratifying his revenge and his ambition, he was in fact pre- 
paring his own destruction. 

Ricliard. It must have been something very striking to 
have watched the coming on of the Revolution, I mean merely 
as a spectator, without having any thing to do with it. 

Mrs. M. The late Mr. Arthur Young enjoyed, if indeed 
it could be called enjoyment, that opportunity. He was at 
Paris in the summer of 1789, and says, "It is impossible to 
havo any other employment at so critical a moment, than 
going from house to house demanding news." He adds, that 
every press throughout France was busied in printing pamph- 
lets in favor of liberty, and that in the book-shops in Paris, 
every hour produced sometliing new. Mr. Young was in 
Paris when the royal family, as you will hear in the ensuing 
chapter, were brought there from Versailles, and resided in a 
sort of captivity in the Tuileries. He says, " I saw the king 
walking in the garden of the Tuileries, attended by six of the 
mihce Bourgeoise. The queen was also there with a lady of 
her court, but attended so closely by the gardes Bourgeoises, 
that she could not speak but in a low voice without being 
overheard. She does not appear in health ; she seems to be 
much affected, and shows it in her face. A httle garden has 
been railed off for the dauphin. Here he was at work with a 
rake and hoe, but not without a guard of two soldiers. He 
is a very pretty, good-natured looking boy, of five or six year.*) 
old." 

Mary. Poor, dear little boy I I fear he could not have 
much enjoyment of his garden with that horrible guard of 
soldiers. 

Ricliard. . How many children had the king and queen ? 

Mrs. M. They had had four, but at this time two only 



A..D. 1789. 1 LOUIS XVI iJi 

were living. Their eldest son died when about six years old, 
and was spared by hi? early death from partaking in the calam- 
ities of his family. But, as if sorrow was to be the portion 
of his race, his short life was embittered by bis jealousy of 
bis brother, whom, because he was vory beautiful, and more 
tlian commonly engaging, he was taught to consider as his 
mother's favorite. The queen, who was a very tender mother, 
loved all her children alike, and this evident coldness and 
want of affection in her eldest soa was one of the first severs 
afflictions of her life. 



CHAPIER XXXVIII. 

LOUIS XVI.— IN COIMTmUATION 
[Years after Christ, 1789- 1793.] 








, — . -■ - -r *,'- 

\ W^J Jjl t "»_j fj J 

The Tuilekies. 

The first step of importance after the opening of tb« States- 
General wa.s, that the deputies of the commons assumed, 
which they did almost immediately, the determination of the 
point in dispute, whether the deliberations should be carried 
on in thr(;e separate chambers or only in one. The coparaons 
declared themselves " The national assembly," and invited 
the deputies of the nobles and clergy to join them T}»« 



rf98 LOUIS XVI. :Chap. XXXVIIl 

majority of the clergy ^oined them first, and then the duke 
of Orleans with several nobles : and, at length, at the press- 
ing instance of the king, who was anxious to compose by any 
means the increased and increasing dissensions of the state 
all the other deputies of those orders came over. 

While these things were going on in the assembly, the 
nobles attending on the court, with the comte d'Artois, the 
king's second brother, at their head, were occupied in collect- 
ing round Paris and Versailles all the troops they could mus- 
ter from different parts of the kingdom. The king dismissed 
M. Necker, the only person about him who possessed any 
portion of the public confidence. This step was taken on the 
11th of July. Paris, where all the materials of insurrection 
had been fomentiag for a considerable time, was thrown into 
commotion by the intelligence of his dismissal. The citizens 
armed, and incorporating with themselves a portion of the 
regular army, took the appellation of the "national guard." 
It was now found that democratical principles were become 
general even among the military, particularly in Paris, where 
they were exposed to the infection of all the prevalent feelings 
of the populace, and to the artifices of those who wished to 
seduce them. 

On the 14th of July, this newly-formed army, accompanied 
by a vast concourse of the lowest people, attacked and storm- 
ed the Bastile,* which had long been converted into a sort 
of state prison. Only seven prisoners were found there. Of 
these, the greater number were imprisoned for forgery. The 
others were persons who had lost their reason, and who, hav- 
ing been confined ever since the preceding reign, had been 
detained because the officers did not know in what way to 
dispose of them. The frantic populace immediately murder- 
ed the governor, M. de Launay, and also M. de Lolme, the 
second in command. The guards who had been concerned 
in, and had directed the attack, could with difficulty prevail 
on the mob to spare the garrison. The heads of the mur- 
dered were fixed upon pikes, and carried in triumph by the 
mob about the streets — a horrid exhibition of that sanguinary 
spirit which became predominant from this time in Paris, and 
which was communicated from thence to other parts of the 
co-ontrj'. I must cast a vail over most of the enormities 
which followed — enormities which are among the strongest 
proofs to be found in hietory how utterly depraved human na- 
ture may become, when the weakness of the law, and al 

' See vignette at the head of the preceding chapter 



A.U. 1789.J LOUIS XVI. Wa 

least the forgetfulnea-3 of religion, give free scope to all its 
fivil passions. 

The princes of the blood and their adherents now omi- 
giated. The king again recalled M. Necker. On the 4th 
of August the vicomte de Noailles, seconded by the duR 
d'Aiguillon, proposed in the national assembly a complete re- 
form in the whole system of taxation ; that for the future 
overy tax should be imposed in proportion to the fortune of 
the contributor, and that no order of the state should be ex- 
empted ; that the feudal services should be redeemable, and 
that personal servitude should be abolished. The excitement 
f^reated by these proposals spread immediately through the 
whole assembly. The nobles and clergy seemed to contend 
with each other which should be the first to offer the greatest 
sacrifices to the pubhc welfare. When they had once begun, 
they were afraid to stop. The representatives of the cities 
renounced their incorporalions ; and every exclusive right 
and privilege, throughout the whole kingdom, was at length 
resigned. No one end, however, did these resignations gain 
for those who made them : the reigning party was more in- 
clined to insult their weakness than to respect or praise theiv 
generosity. 

On the 20th of August, a declaration of rights was agreed 
on, to serve as a basis of the new constitution. On the 20th 
of September it received the royal sanction. Though undei 
this new constitution the crown was not abolished, yet its 
whole real power was taken away. 

At about six in the mornmg on the 6th of October, a 
furious mob of both sexes, who had come from Paris the pre- 
ceding day, made an attack on the palace of Versailles, and 
forced their way into it. They seized two of the gardes du 
corps, dragged them from, their posts, and murdered them in 
the most cruel manner. A party rushed into the queen's 
apartments, with loud outcries, execrations, and threats, too 
horrid to bo related. The sentinel, M. de Miomenil, after 
bravely resisting for a few minutes, finding himself entirely 
overpowered, opened the queen's door, and called out with a 
loud voice, " Save the queen : her life is aimed at : I stand 
alone against two thousand tigers !" He soon after sank 
down covered with wounds, and was left for dead ; but com- 
ing again to the use of his senses, he had the good fortune to 
creep away unobserved through the crowd. It wiU afford 
pleasure to all who love courage and fidelity to know that he 
was* afterward cured of his wounds. The ruffians, reeking 



5»0 LOUIS XVI. LChap. XXXVlil 

with his blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and 
pierced with bayonets and poniards the bed whence this per 
secuted woman had fled, almost naked, and through ways 
unknown to the murderers, to the king's apartments. The 
king was already alarmed, and had gone to seek her. He 
was met by some of his guards, who escorted him back to his 
own apartment, where the qneen was already arrived, and 
where soon afterward the children were brought to them. 
In the mean time, the gardes du corps were hunted from 
place to place through all the purlieus of the palace, much 
as the Protestants had been during the massacre of Saint 
Bartholomew. 

In this imminent danger, the marquis de la Fayette inter- 
posed. He commanded the national guard of Paris, and had 
come to Versailles the preceding evening. He had but little 
influence over his troops, and less over the raging mob ; but 
on the king's promising to set out instantly for Paris, he suc- 
ceeded in checking the immediate progress of violence. To 
Paris with the king ! was the universal cry : there was no 
refusing or remonstrating : the whole royal family was at the 
mercy of the rabble, nor could La Fayette have insured their 
lives for a moment, if they had appeared to hesitate. 

The mournful procession, which lasted six hours, though 
the distance is only twelve miles, began immediately. The 
mob accompanied and surrounded the royal carriage. To 
render the triumph more complete, a party of the gardes du 
corps, deprived of their arms, and treated as prisoners of war. 
were appointed, under the name of an escort, to attend their 
sovereign. That this procession also might in all its parts 
be characteristic, the mangled and bloody heads of the two 
guards who had been murdered in the morning were carried 
along on pikes to grace the spectacle, and, it is said, were fre- 
quently and designedly exhibited before the windows of the 
carriage which contained the royal captives. The king was 
lodged at the. Tuileries ; * the city was illuminated, and the 
evening spent in triumph by the Parisians. The national 
assembly also removed at this time to Paris. 

During the year 1790 the king remained at the Tuileries, 
in a condition no way difierent from that of a prisoner, and 
not treated even with personal respect. On the 16th of 
June a decree passed the assembly for the abolition of all 
hereditary titles, orders, armorial bearings, and other marks 
of the distinction of ranks in society. Of all the king's min 
* See vignette at the bead of this chapter. 



A.D 1790 J LOUIS XVI. SO 

isters, M. Nccker aloac, though himself a plebeian atid born 
and bred in the republic of Geneva, had the courage to op 
pose the. idle folly of this decree. On the 4th of Septeinbpr 
this minister resigned. He was a man of the strictest ai.d 
rnos-^- unblemished integrity, and had, during the greater part 
of his career of ofRce, possessed throughout France high pop- 
ularity. But the opinions of the people were now in a state 
of disturbance, in which every thing, except crime and vio- 
lence, was suspecteci of a want of zeal for liberty ; and thia 
man, who had acquired in France an eminence which per- 
haps no foreigner had ever previously attained in any coun- 
try, and who had certainly done nothing to forfeit the public 
favor, retired to his own country without the smallest mark 
of honor, esteem, or regret. He died in 1804, at Copet. As 
a minister of finance, he would probably have ranked high in 
any ordinary times or circumstances. It is generally sup- 
posed that he had not that stamp of high ability which alone 
could have carried the government in safety through the 
perils by which it had been of late environed ; but it must 
be ever doubtful whether, under the circumstances in which 
France was placed at the time of the convocation of the 
States-General, the wisdom or virtue of any individual could 
have averted the fatal consequences which were to follow. 

A decree was passed on the 27th of November, ejecting 
from their benefices all those of the clergy who should refuse 
to take an oath " to maintain to the utmost the new constitu- 
tion of France, and particularly the decrees relative to the 
civil constitution of the country." The pope had declared 
himself in disapprobation of tliis oath ; and it was refused 
unhesitatingly by vast numbers of the clergy, including al- 
most all the bishops. Of one hundred and thirty-one bishops, 
there were only three who would take the oath. 

Dbring these events the number of emigrants increased 
considerably. In the spring of 1791, they formed an army 
on the German frontier, under the command of the prince of 
Conde.* They assumed a black uniform, faced with yellow, 
with a death's head, surrounded by a laurel wreath, on one 
cuff, and a sword on the other, with the motto, " Conquer or 
die." Much jealousy was entertained in France that thia 
army of emigrants would attempt a counter-revolution, and 
ihat" it would have the support also of many of the powers 

* This prince of Conde, Louis Joseph, was the only son of the duke of 
Bourbon, who succeeded the if gent Orleans as minister to Louis XV 
Hee page 4.'^5. 



602 LOUIS XVI. lChap. XXXVm 

of Europe, who were evidently alarmed by the internal dis- 
orders of France, and withheld, perhaps, from interfering 
in them only by the reasonable apprehension that any symp- 
tom of external hostility might endanger the king's personal 
safety. 

The king and queen and their children, the princess Eliza- 
beth, the king's sister, with monsieur and madame, the king'a 
brother and his wife, were now the only persons of the royal 
family who remained in France : all the rest had emigrated. 
Monsieur and madame left the palace of the Luxemburg on 
the night of the 20th of June, 1791, and on the 23d reach- 
ed Brussels in safety. On the same night also of the 20th 
the king himself, accompanied by the queen, and their chil- 
dren, and the princess Elizabeth, quitted the Tuileries ; the 
king's intention, however, not being to leave France, but to 
put himself at the head of the loyal part of his army. Un- 
happily they were stopped at Varennes, and brought back 
under escort of the national guard. All the suspicions 
which had before been entertained of the king's fidelity to 
the new constitution were, of course, augmented by his thus 
attempting to escape ; but he was received at Paris with 
more temper than could have been expected, and for a short- 
time the affairs of the country bore a comparatively tranquil 
appearance. 

The national assembly was now hastening fast to the final 
completion of the new constitution. On the 3d of September 
it was presented to the king, and on the 13th he signified his 
acceptance of it. On the following day he repaired in person 
to the assembly, and being conducted to a chair of state, pre- 
pared for him at the side of the president, he signed the con- 
stitutional act, and took an oath to be faithful to the law and 
the nation. On the 30th of September, this first national 
assembly, which is often known by the name of the constitu- 
ent assembly, dissolved itself, after having, by a kind of selF- 
denying ordinance, excluded all its members from being eligi- 
ble to seats in the next assembly. That next, which is called 
the legislative assembly, opened on the 1st of October, and 
soon gave proof of a most lamentable unfitness for the import- 
ant functions devolved on it. Things might have turned out 
better, if some of the members of the first assembly, many of 
whom, it was hoped, might have learned wisdom from ex* 
perience, had retained their place among the national repre 
eentatives. 

The frightful violences which had been committed through- 



A D 1792.] LOUIS XVI. 603 

out France, the unsparing attacks which had been made, on 
the royal authority, and an apprehension that the dangerous 
principles which had in part produced thera might spread to 
their own dominions, had now excited a very general alarm 
among the sovereign princes of Europe. Francis II., who, 
on the sudden death of Leopold, in the beginning of 1792, 
succeeded to the possession of the imperial cro^vn, and in con- 
junction with him the king of Prussia, were the first powers 
to prepare for hostilities. War was decreed by the national 
assembly against Francis on the 20th of April, 1792. The 
first operations were unfavorable to the French, who attacked, 
but unsuccessfully, the Austrian Netherlands. On the 25th 
of July, the duke of Brunswick, commander-in-chief of the 
united armies of Prussia and Austria, issued at Coblentz a 
most violent manifesto, in which he declared himself author- 
ized by the sovereigns of those countries to support the royal 
authority in France, and even resolved to inflict " on those 
who shall deserve it, the most exemplary and ever-memorable 
avenging punishments, by giving up the city of Paris to mili- 
tary execution, and exposing it to total destruction ; and that 
the rebels who shall be guilty of illegal resistance shall suflei 
the punishments which they shall have deserved." It may 
well be supposed that this arrogant declaration excited s 
general indignation in France. It seemed to unite against 
the invaders all who were not zealots for the royal authority 
and perhaps did more than any other single cause to pave the 
way to the bloody tragedy of the king's death. But this wa? 
to be preceded by new violences and indignities. 

On the 10th of August an attack was made on the Tuile- 
ries by a republican party, which was now gaining the ascen- 
dency. The king and the royal family took refuge in the 
national assembly. The insurgents, in the mean time, forced 
the gates of the palace, and made an attack on the regiment 
of Swiss guards who defended it. The national guards, who 
had been joined with the Swiss, deserted thera most perfidious- 
ly in their hour of need, and the Swiss were at length over 
powered by numbers, and gave way. AU of them who could 
be found, and not the guards only, but also the servants of 
the palace, were massacred in cold blood, and even those who 
escaped to the assembly were with difficulty preserved froix; 
the popular fury. On the 14 th of August the royal family 
were committed prisoners to the old palace of the Temple, 
one of the most melancholy places of custody that could b« 
selected. 



£04 LOUIS XVI. [Chap. XXXVlll 

Meanwhile the combined armies had entered France, with 
the full expectation of speedy victory. The Prussians, in 
particular, proud of their victories under the great Frederic, 
believed that they would have nothing to do but to trample 
on the undisciplined rabble whom they should find opposed to 
them. All France was in a state of the greatest disorder. 
Almost all the officers who had formerly served in its armiea 
had joined the emigrant army, and had given the duke of 
Brunswick the most erroneous accounts of the pretended dis- 
satisfaction of all orders of men with the conduct of the ruling 
factions at Paris. The operations of the duke were in the 
first instance successful. He took Longwy and Verdun, and 
it was expected that he would advance immediately on Paris. 

This apprehension excited among the ruffians who now 
abounded in that distracted city a still more savage fury than 
they had before manifested. On the 2d of September a party 
of the Federes, as those persons called themselves, who pre- 
tended the greatest zeal for liberty, rushed to the prisons, 
where a great number of priests were under confinement fof 
refusing to take the oath which was prescribed by the late 
constitution. Of these unhappy men, twenty-three were 
massacred in the abbey of St. Germain ; one hundred and 
fifty-two at the convent of the Carmelites ; ninety- two at the 
seminary of St. Firmin. The murder of the Swiss officers 
who had escaped on the 10th of August, and had afterward 
been imprisoned, soon followed : other inurders were then 
perpetrated. A sort of tribunal was instituted, before which 
prisoners of each sex, and of all ages, were brought, in mock- 
ery of the forms of legal justice. The queen's confidential 
friend, the beautiful princess of Lamballe, was, after one of 
these mock trials, murdered, and her head placed on a pike, 
and carried round the streets. After exhibiting it at the Pa- 
lais Royal, where the duke of Orleans was at that moment 
sitting down to dinner, the assassins carried it, together with 
the bleeding heart, to the Temple, and displayed it under the 
window of the apartment in which the royal prisoners were 
confined. The dreadful spectacle threw the queen into con- 
vulsions, in which she remained for several hours. The 
number of persons murdered on this and the following day ia 
said to have amounted to 1085. The hospital of the Bicetre. 
said to contain above 4000 persons, was afterward besieged 
by the same frantic wretches. After a resistance of eight 
days, it was taken, and every soul within the walls was put 
f/O death. Other massacres were perpetrated at Orleans and 



i.n 1792. J LOUIS XVI. 505 

Rlieims, at Lyons, and at Meaux. In short, there is not in 
the history of mankind any more painful and horrible narra- 
tive than that of these massacres of September, 1792, in the 
midst of a nation which has always professed itself the model 
of all politeness and civilization. The only ground, indeed., 
on which I can feel myself justified in giving you this rela- 
Uon, even though I suppress the worst barbarities, is, that 
the shocking picture here presented to us of the worst excess- 
es of human vice and depravity, is at the same time relievec 
by that which we have, on the other hand, of the heroism of 
many of the unhappy sufferers. 

The princess de Lamballe bore, with unshaken fortitude 
the insults of her ferocious persecutors, and refused, though 
mildly, to seek forgiveness at their hands. The unhappy 
priests, who were murdered in their prisons, met their fate 
with that calm resignation which can be derived only from 
conscious virtue, and from a firm reliance on God. Their 
deportment extorted, in some, instances, the admiration even 
of their persecutors. M. Violet, an officer who presided over 
the massacre at the convent of the Carmelites, exclaimed, 
some time after, in an involuntary enthusiasm, " I am lost '. 
I am overpowered with astonishment : it is beyond my con- 
ception : and I am convinced that any man who had been 
witness of the scene, as I was, w^ould have been equally 
astonished. The priests met death with as much joy and as 
much pleasure as if they had been going to a bridal feast I" 
And yet I know not that even while we venerate the forti- 
tude displayed by these victims of the most imbridled tyranny 
that ever disgraced any civilized age, we ought to allow our 
selves to be very greatly surprised by it. When the spirit i,* 
roused by oppression, and hope is lost in despair, and particu 
larly when long and severe alfiictions have directed the mind 
to the true sources of consolation, I can hardly see why even 
our weak nature should shrink from the refuge afibrded by a 
short and easy death, which places us at once in His merciful 
hands, who, we know, inflicts not on his servants any eartlily 
chastisement, which shall not be for their eternal welfare. 

On the 21st of September, the national legislative assem 
hly was succeeded by a new body of representatives, which 
took the name of the national convention. Two English- 
men, the celebrated Dr. Priestley, and a man of the name of 
Paine, who had acquired much notoriety by his democratical 
writings, were elected into this body by certain departraenls . 
but the former dechned accepting the seat. 



*0« LOUIS XVI. [Cha?. XXXVIIl 

Cn the 22(1, the first day of the actual sitting of the new 
convention, it was decreed by acclamation, ". that royalty is 
abolished in France." It was the next day decreed, that all 
public acts should be dated by the year of the French repub- 
lic. This rage of republicanism soon went so far, that the 
ordinary titles, monsieur and madame, were abolished, and 
the appellation of citizen substituted in their stead, as being 
more suitable to the principles of equality. 

There were also violent parties among the republicans them 
selves. The most numerous party, and by much the most 
moderate, was called that of the Gironde, and sometimes that 
of the Brissotines, from Brissot, their principal leader. The 
opposite party, which was entitled the Mountain, was chiefly 
composed of men of daring and sanguinary characters. At 
the head of this party were Danton and Robespierre. To 
this party was also now commonly appropriated the more last- 
mg and memorable appellation of Jacobins; an appellation 
which had been first given to one of the most violent clubs of 
revolutionists, which met in the hall of the Jacobin friars a^; 
Paris ; a body of religious, who were of the Dominican order, 
and whose convent at Paris was in the Pvue St. Jacq'ues. Oi 
all the causes which swelled the horror of the revolution- 
probably the most considerable was the evil influence of these 
clubs, and of others of similar character, which Avere perpetu- 
ally meeting to discuss the measures of the legislature. In 
these assemblies, which were composed almost entirely of the 
worst and most ignorant members of society, the hardy and 
the ferocious alone took the lead. These ruled the populace, 
by exciting a universal fear that moderation would be inter- 
preted into a want of civism, or a want of sufficient zeal for 
liberty. They also terrified the convention into many meas- 
ures, which the great majority of the members would certainly 
not have been prevailed on to adopt, if they had not feared to 
incur the same suspicion. 

One great object of the Jacobins was to destroy the king. 
This unhappy monarch was, as you have been told, confined 
in the Temple, where every art which a malignant cruelty 
could suggest was put in practice to make his imprisonment 
irksome. Even the the common necessaries of life were often 
withheld, and scarcely ever granted without much insolence, 
and after long delay. Threatening and indecent inscriptions 
were scrawled on the walls, and offensive ballads sung in the 
tiearing of the royal prisoners. But they bore these insults 
with an ui.it^haken magnanimity. Not a murmur, nor a com 



A.D. 1792.] LOUIS XVI. 507 

plaint, ever escaped from them. The kiig", and queen, and 
madame Elizabeth, employed their captivity in the education 
of the dauphin and his sister, and in reading to each other. 
The king employed also a part of every morning and evening 
in study. A short airing was allowed them in the garden, but 
they never could avail themselves of this permission, without 
encountering the insolence and depraved animosity of those 
who watched and surrounded them. 

On the 11th of December the ill-fated monarch was ordered 
to the bar of the convention. He was accused of having 
committed various crimes against the sovereignty and liberty 
of the people, and was obliged to answer several interrogato- 
ries. He, on his part, demanded a copy of the accusation, and 
of the papers on which it was founded, and claimed the right 
of choosing counsel for his defense. No objection was made 
to the first of these demands, and the last was granted also, 
but with some difficulty. 

On the king's return to the Temple he requested to see his 
family, but was answered by the officers that they had no 
orders on the subject. In the course of the evening he often 
renewed the same request. For a long time no reply was 
given. He was at length told that he must wait till it Avas 
permitted by the convention. By that body, four days after- 
W"ard, it was decreed, that the queen and madame Elizabeth 
should have no comraiunication with the king during the trial ; 
but that he might, if he pleased, have the company of his 
children, to whom, however, it was in that case strictly for- 
bidden to see either their mother or their aunt. Louis then 
refused to avail himself of a decree which W'as clogged with 
buch a restriction. 

The counsel chosen by the king for liis defense were M. 
Tronchet, M. Lamoignon de Malesherbes, and M. Deseze — 
men who executed with great courage and ability the honor 
able task confided to them. On Christmas-day the king made 
his will : on the following morning he was summoned to the 
convention for the purpose of making his defense, which was 
read by M. Deseze. When his counsel had finished, the 
king made a short speech, expressive of the regard wliich he 
had always felt for his people. He was then conducted back 
to the Temple, and did not again appear before the conven- 
tion. 

The discussions which followed were brought to a close on 
the 16th and 17th of January. Not one single member of 
the convention had the boldness to assert the innocence of his 



I?(j& LOUIS XVI. [Chap. XXXVlh. 

sovereign. Of 721 sufFrages which were given on the ques 
tion, what punishment should be inflicted, 366 were for im- 
mediate death. The duke of Orleans, now called Philip 
Egalite, a name which he had assum.ed to pay court to the 
mob, was, to his eternal disgrace, among those who voted for 
the king's death. Paine, the Englishman, who must have 
owed his seat in the convention to the intemperance of hia 
republican politics, was among those who voted against it. 

The defenders of Louis were then admitted to the bar, and 
M. Deseze read a note from the king declaring that he ap- 
pealed to the nation itself agamst the sentence of its represent- 
atives. But this appeal the convention would not allow, and 
the next day they decreed that the sentence should be exe- 
cuted without delay. 

On Sunday, January 20th, the messengers of the conve«i- 
tion entered Louis's apartment, in order to announce to him 
in form this decree. The king demanded four things : the 
(irst, a delay of three days, to prepare himself for appearing 
before God ; secondly, the assistance and consolation of a 
priest ; thirdly, permission to see his family privately ; and 
lastly, an exemption, for the little time he had to live, from 
the oppressive vigilance of the mmiicipal officers. The delay 
was refused, but the other requests were granted. The inter- 
viev/ with his family, wliich took place late in the evening, 
was affecting and agitating in the extreme. He promised to 
^ee them again the next morning ; but when the morning came, 
he thought that it would be most advisable to spare both 
them and himself the pang of another sad separation. After 
passing some time at his devotions with M. Edgeworth, the 
priest whom, at the king's desire, the convention had permit- 
ted to attend him, he went to bed and slept soundly. 

On the morning of the 2]st, at eight o'clock, he entered 
the carriage in which he was to be conveyed to execution. 
The procession was nearly two hours in reaching the place 
appointed, formerly the Place of Louis XV., but which had 
now the name given it of the Place of the Revolution. The 
interval was employed by the king in reading from a breviary, 
lent him by M. Edgeworth, the prayers for persons in ex- 
tremity. 

When the carriage stopped at the scaflbld, the king said, 
" We are at last arrived."* He pulled off his coat, unbut- 
toned the neck of his shirt, ascended the scaffold with steadi- 
aess, air d surveyed for a few moments the immense multitude ; 

* "I^ous voici done amves." 



A D. 1/92.] LOUIS XVI. SO* 

then approaching the edge, he made a motion for silence, ana 
with a raised voice, said, " Frenchmen, I die innocent : ] 
pardon all my enemies, and I hope that France — " 

Santerre, one of the leaders of the Jacobins, a man who, 
I have been told, had been a butcher, and who was on horse- 
back near the scaffold, made a signal for the drums to beat, 
and for the executioners to perform their office. The king's 
voice was drowned in the noise of the drums. 

Three executioners then approached to seize him. At the 
sight of a cord, with which one of them attempted to tie his 
arms, the king, for the first time, showed signs of indignation, 
and seemed to be about to resist, but he recollected himself 
in a moment, and submitted. The executioners laid hold of 
him, and placed him on the guillotine. The confessor then, 
kneeling with his face near to that of the king, pronounced 
aloud, " Son of St. Louis, ascend to heaven !" The blow was 
given. M. Edgeworth's face was sprinkled with the king's 
blood. The executioners walked round the scaffold, holding 
up the head to be seen by the people. A few, who had probably 
been hired for the purpose, cried, "Long live the nation I long 
live the repubhc !" 

The queen, the princess Elizabeth, the dauphin, and the 
princess royal continued for some time in close confinement in 
the Temple. On the 3d of July, the dauphin, who was about 
eight years old, was forcibly taken from his mother, and placed 
under the care of a cobbler of the name of Simon. He still 
continued to be confined in the Temple ; and this separation 
from his own family was doubtless intended as a means of 
degrading his manners and character. This poor young 
prince, however, happily for him, died on the 9th of June, 
1795. 

The queen was brought to trial, October 14th, 1793, and 
on the l6th of that month was executed, meeting her fate 
with the greatest fortitude and composure. Madame Eliza- 
beth was put to death on the 10th of May following. The 
young princess, after the death of her brother in 1795, was 
given up by the convention to the Austrians, in exchange for 
some French commissioners who had been made prisoners 
'She afterward married the duke d'Angouleme. 

Louis XVI. was born August 23, 1754 ; was guillotined 
January 21, 1793. He married. May 16, 1770, Marie An- 
toinette, archduchess of Aastria, by whom he had two sons, 
and two daughters. 

(1.) Louis Joseph, bom October 22. 1781 ; died June 4, 



Sie LOUIS XVI. LChap. XXXVIIi 

178S. (2 ) Louis Charles, afterward called Louis XVII., 
born March 27, 1785; died in the Ter.iple, June 9, 1795. 

(1.) Marie Therese, born Dec. 29th, 1778, married after- 
ward the due d'Angouleme. (2.) Sophie Helene, died an 
iniant. 

A very short time after the murder of the queen, the duke 
of Orleans, who though he had committed so many crimes, in 
the hope of acquiring popular favor, had yet never acquired 
it, but was at all times the object of universal indignation 
and hatred, was condemned and executed. On the day of 
his execution only a very few people were present when first 
he ascended the cart, but the rumor soon flew, and attracted 
innumerable gazers. These reproached him in the severest 
terms with all the infamy of his past life, especially with hia 
assassinations, his perfidy, and his vote against the king. All 
this, however, together with his actual death on the scaffold, 
he bore with the greatest possible intrepidity. He was in thr 
forty-seventh year of his age. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

Richard. I can not help thinking that it was very cow'- 
ftrdly in the nobles of France to emigrate, and leave the king 
and queen in their distress. 

Mrs. Markham. Some of the nobility, who by their at- 
tachment to the court had made themselves obnoxious to the 
people, were urged by the king and queen themselves to leave 
the country at the first breaking out of the troubles. Among 
these was the duchess of Polignac, who, when she afterward 
heard in her exile of the queen's death, was so much shocked 
that she uttered one shriek, and instantly expired. 

Mary. It was very good-natured in the king and queer 
to wish to send their friends away out of danger ; but I think 
that if I had been one of them I would not have gone. 

George. Nor I neither. I would have tried to have made 
the nobles rally round the throne, and I would have defend- 
ed the king, sword in hand, instead of sneaking out of the 
kingdom. 

Mrs. M. The king's excessive timidity, and his dread of 
shedding blood, damped the ardor of those who would have 
been wilhng to serve him. I, however, quite agree with you 
in blaming the emigration of the nobles, and it was not long 
b*efore the court found the ill consequences of it. Pressing 



t.-'ONV 1 LOUIS XVI. 51 i 

letters were sent to invite many of them to coine back, ir. 
Bome of whioli tlie queen added with her omti hand the fol 
lowing postscript : " If you love your king, your religion, your 
government, and your country, return ! return I return I Mane 
Antoinette." 

George. If I had got such a letter, not fire nor watei 
should have kept me. 

Mrs. M. From the time when the fortunes of France 
Degan to cloud over, the character of the queen began to rise. 
She was no longer the frivolous creature she had formerly 
been. She devoted herself wholly to her husband and chil 
dren, and although she was continually importuned to with- 
draw from the popular fury, of which she was peculiarly the 
object, and to retire to Vienna, she could not be induced to 
leave France, and would say, " My only care is for my hus- 
band and children ; with them and them only will I live and 
die." Unfortunately for her, the king's indecision, and par- 
ticularly his want of presence of mind on all sudden emer- 
gencies, freqently obliged her to act a prominent part ; and 
thus the public became encouraged in the notion that she 
was herself the author of aU the measures of the court. 

Mary. Was she clever in public affairs ? 

Mrs. M. No person whose judgment is weak, and tein 
per impetuous, can he clever in either public or private busi 
ness, and it must be owned that the counsels of this unfor- 
tunate woman were often very injudicious. But what appears 
to me the most blamable part of her conduct is, that she had 
an extreme fondness for secret contrivances and under-hand 
plots. These plots and contrivances were perpetually be- 
trayed, and thus exposed her to the continual suspicion of 
being in league with the enemies of the state. But whatever 
might be her errors as a politician, and as a queen, her con- 
duct as a wife and mother was exemplary, and in all the con- 
cluding trials of her unhappy life she showed an heroic courage 
and greatness of mind. 

Richard. If the royal family had not been found out, 
and bi-ought back that time when they were trying to make 
their escape, who knows but that they might all have been 
live now. 

Mrs. M. The king always refused to quit the kingdom. 
At the time he was stopped at Varennes, he was only pre- 
paring to go to Longwy, a place on the frontier, where he 
meant to put himself under the protection of that part of the 
army which was commanded by M. de BouJlle. a steady roy 



ii2 - LOUIS XVI. [Chap. XXXVm 

alist. But there seemed, a fatality in all the measures which 
were taken by this unfortunate family. Every attempt which 
they made, or which was made by others, to remedy thei\ 
affairs, only made them worse. Of this the liistory of thoir 
flight to Varennes is a striking instance. The plan had b"en 
principally arranged by count Fersen, a young Swedish noble- 
'nan who happened to be in Paris, and whose ardor inspireo 
him with this project to save them. The count knew that a 
Russian lady, named madame KorfF, was about to leave Paris 
with her family, and he obtained a duplicate of her passport. 
Madame de Tourzel, the governess of the royal children, was 
to represent the Russian lady, and the young princp«s and 
the dauphin were to pass for her two daughters ; the queen 
lor the governess ; and the king and the princess Elizabeth 
lor attendants. It was arranged that they should take the 
road through Chalons, and that at Pont de Sommerville a 
detachment from Bouille's army, commanded by an oihcer 
named Goguelat should be in waiting to escort them to Va- 
rennes, where relays of horses were to be placed to carry them 
to Longwy. 

Every thing being arranged, the first difficulty was how to 
get the royal family out of the palace, where they were doubly 
guarded by the suspicious watchfulness of the republicans, and 
by the fetters that still remained of the court etiquettes. At 
about half past ten at night the dauphin and his sister were 
taken from their beds. The poor little boy was so sleepy that 
he could scarcely stand, and when he saw himself dressed ii; 
girl's clothes, he asked if they were going to act a play. Tht 
children and madame de Tourzel were first conveyed to the 
coach, which was waiting at some distance from the palace. 
The dauphin was soon asleep at the bottom of the carriage, 
in happy ignorance of his danger ; but the princess, who was 
about thirteen years old, was able to comprehend the anxieties 
of their situation. Indeed, I take tliis accomit chiefly from hei 
narrative of the transaction. After waiting one hour, which, 
as you may well think, seemed an age, the king and queen, 
and princess Elizabeth joined them, and they set off, driven 
by count Fersen, who acted as their coachman, to a place 
where a traveling carriage was in waiting. Into this the 
royal party got, and the count, to avoid suspicion, was obliged 
to hasten back. 

Never was a more helpless set of beings cast adrift in the 
A^orld than the six poor creatures, who were now at the dead 
rit' the night tc sleer the'r course across a country in which the^ 



OoNV.l LOUIS XVI, ^il 

were surrounded by a thousand dangers. They had, it is true^ 
three gentlemen in their train who acted as couriers ; but 
these supported so ill their assumed character, that instead of 
assisting, they only added to the hazards of the royal partj^ 
As for the king and queen, they knew no more of the routine 
of traveling for private persons in France than the poor boy 
who was asleep at their feet. They however went on, accord- 
mg to the plan that had been arranged for them, and proceeded 
through that night, and through part of the following day, 
without meeting with any other mischance than a shght ao 
cident to the carriage, which caused some delay. 

On this delay, however, hung the fates of the fugitives 
Goguelat, after Avaiting some time at the appointed place, not 
seeing the royal party arrive, concluded that the enterprise 
had been abandoned ; and, perceiving that he and his party 
had excited the observation of the country people, gave orders 
to return by cross roads to Varennes.* He had not left Pont 
de Sommerville more than a quarter of an hour, when the 
travelers arrived, and were thrown into the utmost perplexity 
and dismay at not finding there the expected escort. They, 
however, proceeded, and arrived at St. Menehould, where the 
king had the imprudence to put his head out of the carriage 
windov/, to make some inquiries about the road. At this 
instant Drouet, the postmaster's son, caught a glimpse of him, 
and was struck with his resemblance to the impression of the 
royal head on some new assignats, which he had that morning 
received from Paris. He drew near the carriage, and the 
sight of the queen confirmed him in his suspicions, and he set 
ofi" instantly to give the alarm at Varennes. In the mean 
time the royal family advanced. They arrived at Varennes 
in the night ; but not knowing where to find the relay of 
horses, they drove about the town in search of them, thus 
giving Drouet ample time to rouse the inhabitants. Present- 
ly the place was in an uproar ; the bridge was barricaded, so 
that the fugitives could not proceed ; and the carriage was 
surrounded by a throng of people. At this juncture Goguelat 
and his party rode up, and asked the king's permission to force 
a way for him through the town. The king inquired wheth- 
er it would cost many lives, and on being told that it probably 
would, he forbade maldng tlie attempt, and yielded himself a 
prisoner. 

George. Was it cowardice or stupidity, that made hin: 
give himself up so tamely ? 

* ^t some distance east of Par's, and a Htt j to the HDrth. 

V* 



514 LOUIS XVI. [Chip. XXXVIli 

Mrs M. I should rather think it was his natural tender- 
ness of lisposition, which made him shrink from the shedding 
of blood. In Louis's character there was a singular mixture 
of cowardice and courage. In danger and difficulty he had 
the timidity of a child ; but in misfortune no man could show 
more firmness and resolution. 

Richard. I suppose the thing was that Louis was a cow- 
ard by nature, but that reason and religion gave him courage 
to bear misfortunes. 

Mary. Pray, mamma, go on, and tell us what happened 
at Varennes. 

Mrs. M. The royal party was obliged to alight from the 
carriage, and to enter the house of the mayor, who was a 
grocer. Here the queen, sitting down in the shop, exhausted 
all her powers of fascination and persuasion on the mayor's 
wife (who it should appear was chief manager of the affairs 
of Varennes), in hopes to prevail with her to befriend them 
The woman seemed greatly touched, but remained neverthe- 
less inflexible, and persisted in saying, while the tears rolled 
down her cheeks, that it would be the destruction of her hus- 
band should he connive at their escape. Marie Antoinette 
pleaded in vain ; the wretched fugitives were compelled again 
to get into their carriage, and to retrace their steps, amidst 
the insults of a disorderly mob, which the news of the arrest 
of the royal family had assembled round them. Barnave 
and Petion, two deputies from the national assembly, were 
sent to meet them on their return to Paris. These men got 
into the carriage. Barnave conducted himself with civility 
and respect ; but Petion, who was by birth a gentleman, 
affected to show his dvism, by assuming a vulgar and dis- 
gusting freedom of manner. He threw the bones of a cold 
chicken, which he was eating in the carriage, out of the win- 
dow, and the king was obUged to draw his head back to 
avoid being struck by them. He then took the dauphin 
rudely on his knee, and began to play with his hair, which 
was very beautiful, twirling the ringlets round his fingers. 
The poor boy, half frightened, and half hurt, cried out at 
this treatment ; on which the queen could no longer conceal 
her displeasure, and snatching the child away, said, " Give 
me my son ; he is accustomed to tenderness and delicacy, 
which renders him li.tle fit for such familiarity." 

Mary. And how were they used when they got back to 
Paris ? 

Mrs. M W''orse as you may suppose, than pver.^ 'Wey 



OoN? J LOQIS XVI. 514 

were replaced in the Tuileries, and watched with the utmost 
vigilance. Guards were placed at the doois of their apart 
ments night and day, and the queen could only obtain per- 
mission to have her bed-room door closed while she was dress- 
ing and undressing. The princesse de Lamballe had a short 
time before escaped to England ; hut when she heard of the 
unfortunate termination of the flight to Varennes, she resolved 
to return to Paris, and share the prison and the afflictions oi 
her friend. The queen of England used every argument to 
detain her, but without effect. When she arrived at the 
Tuileries, and beheld the change which a few weeks had 
wrought in the beautiful Marie Antoinette, she could scarce- 
ly believe her senses. The queen's eyes were sunk in their 
sockets, her hair had turned white in one night, and she look- 
ed ten years older. Indeed, from the moment of the arrest, 
she had given up every thing as lost. Her spirits were bro- 
ken, and she almost entirely lost her sleep. But though her 
beauty was thus dimmed, and all her hopes were gone, she 
still maintained the grace and dignity of her air, and when it 
was necessary could call uj) the energies of her lofty spirit. 
As for the king, he appeared at this time to be sinking into a 
state of lethargy. 

Ricliard. Was the princesse de Lamballe one of the royal 
family ? 

Mrs. M. No ; she was an Italian, and related to the 
king of Sardinia. She was the widow of the prince de Lam- 
balle, the only son of the due de Penthievre, grandson of the 
comte de Toulouse, one of the illegitimate sons of Louis 
XIV. ; she was extremely beautiful, and very amiable. 

Mary. I can not think how they could have had the heart 
to kill her. 

M7'S. M. One can only account for it by saying, that the 
Parisians were at this time possessed by a mad and malignant 
spirit of party, which, as has been truly observed, " shuts up 
every avenue of the heart, and renders us cruel and wicked." 
Some peculiarly melancholy circumstances attending the 
death of the princess Lamballe are to be met with in a book 
purporting to be written by one of her confidential attendants, 
and containing her memoirs. It is there said, that while she 
was in the prison de la Force, the due de Penthievre, whose 
name is never mentioned hut in terms of the greatest respect, 
left no means imtried to save her. On the first rumor of an 
intended massacre of the prisoners, he engaged a person, by 
the ofTer of an enormous bribe, to convey her in the night 



ild I.OUIS K"L L^HAP. xxxvij; 

Lime to a place of security. In tlie laeau time an idea had 
pone abroad that the murderers, to save themselves the trouhla 
of searching the prisons, intended to open all the doors, and 
to call out libre, libre, in the supposition that the prisoners, 
allured by the hope of freedom, would rush out of their cells, 
and fall on the knives of the assassins, who would stand ready 
to attack them. A friend of madame de Lamballe, in the 
belief that this most treacherous plan would be adopted, con- 
trived to have a billet conveyed to her couched in these 
words, " Let whatever happen, for God's sake do not quit your 
cell : you will be spared." In consequence of this well-meant 
but unfortunate intimation, the princess refused to accompany 
the due de Penthievre's agent, who came a short time after- 
ward to convey her away, and the man was compelled to 
leave her in prison. 

Mary. How sorry the friend must have been who sent 
the letter I 

Gem-ge. You said that you took the history of the jour- 
ney to Varennes from the account which the young princess 
wrote of it. Is that account printed ? 

Mrs. M. Yes, it is ; and also a very interesting narrative 
which she wrote of the events which took place in the Tem- 
ple, during the time she was a prisoner in it. 
Mary. Can you tell us any particulars ? 
Mrs. M. I can ; but I must warn you that it is a very 
heart-rending history. 

Mary. Well, manoma, I will try to bear it. , 
Mrs. M. The princess was about fourteen years old when 
she first entered the gloomy walls of her prison. She hau 
great difficulty in writing her journal ; for having been de- 
prived of pen, ink, and paper, she was obliged to write with 
a pencil on such scraps of paper as she could secrete from hei 
iailers. These scraps were afterward collected together and 
published. "When the royal family were first placed in the 
tower of the Temple, they had the comfort of being togeth- 
er ; there v/as a good colleetion of old books, to which the 
king was allowed access ; and these books and the instruction 
of the dauphin furnished his chief occupations. But you 
shall have the princess's own accoxuit, which, I ought to re- 
mind you, is written with the artless simplicity of a girl, and 
under every disadvantage of time and circumstance. " My 
father rose at seven, and was employed in his devotions till 
eight ; afterward he dressed himself and my brother, and at 
nine came tc breakfast w^th my mother. After breakfa!".t 



UoNT.j LOUIS :.VI. -ill 

ray fathei taught my brother hia lesso s till eleven. The 
child then played till twelve, at which hour the whole family 
was obliged to walk in the garden, whatever the weathei 
might be, because the guards, who were r3lieved at that time, 
wished to see all the prisoners, and satisfy themselves that we 
were safe. The walk lasted till dinner, which was at two 
o'clock. After dinner, my father and mother played at tric- 
trac, or piquet, or, to speak more plainly, pretended to play, 
that they might have an opportunity of saying a few words 
to one another." 

Mary. Were they not allowed then to talk to each other 
except when they were playing at cards ? 

M7-S. M. They were allowed, indeed, to speak, but only 
in a voice loud enough for the persons, who were constantly 
keeping guard over them, to hear what they said. Perhaps 
they observed that while they were playing at cards they 
were not so narrowly watched, and might enjoy the comfort 
of conversing unobserved. 

Richard. ' If you please, mamma, will you go on ? 

Mrs. M. " At six my brother went again to my father, to 
say his lessons, and to play till supper-time. After supper, 
my mother undressed him quickly, and put him to bed. We 
then went up to our own apartment. The king did not go 
to bed till eleven. My mother worked a great deal of tapes- 
try ; she directed my studies, and often made me read aloud. 
My aunt was frequently at prayer, and read every morning 
the divine service for the day. She read a good many relig- 
ious books, and sometimes, at the queen's request, would read 
aloud." 

George. Were they allowed to have any servants to at- 
tend on them ? 

Mrs. M. The king was permitted to retain M. Clery, his 
valet, but the queen was deprived of all her women, and was 
waited upon by her daughter and sister. At first they were 
allowed to have a woman to clean out their rooms, light theii 
fires, and do all the harder work ; but this woman, who was 
a low, vulgar creature, and a furious repubhcan, proved a 
great torment to them. At last she lost her intellects, and 
they had themselves, for a time, the trouble and anxiety 
of attending on her in the unhappy state to which she was 
thus reduced. When she was gone, the two princesses had 
to make their beds, and clean the rooms. The young princesa 
Bays, that she and her aunt were very awkward at this work 
at first, and that it used to fatigue tbem very much. Bui 



513 LOUIS XVI. [Chap, XXXVIIl 

they preferred a.iy thing to the teing pestered with aiiothei 
female Jacohiu. 

Mary. It seemed as if every thing was done that could 
be thought of for the mere purpose of tormenting these poor 
people. 

Mrs. M. There was scarcely a moment in wliich they 
were not exposed to some fresh insult or vexation. They 
were frequently searched, to see that they had no treasonable 
papers, that is, what the municipal officers chose to call trea- 
sonable papers, about them. They were deprived of almost 
all their personal comforts. Their work v/as searched ; and 
at last their tapestry was taken from them, under pretense 
that it might afford them a secret method of writing or com- 
municating intelligence by hidden signs or devices. While 
the queen was giving her daughter lessons, a municipal officer 
was contmually looking over their shoulders, to see that they 
were not employed in plots and conspiracies. The wretches 
even carried their insults so far as to accuse the princess 
Elizabeth of having stolen a china cup, which by some acci- 
dent was broken or mislaid. When the king was dead, his 
ring and other little remembrances, which he had wished his 
family to keep for his sake, were withheld from them ; and 
the only remembrance of him which his sister, who was ten- 
derly attached to him, was able to procure, was an old nat 
which by some accident had been left in the tower. This hax 
«!he treasured for his sake as a most valuable relic. It did 
not, however, long escape the prying eyes of the municipal 
officers, who took it away, saying, " it was a suspicious cii- 
«umstance." 

George. The unfeeling savages I I have hardly patienct! 
to hear any more about them. 

Mrs. M. But the most affecting part of the narrative is 
yet to come. The princess, after detailing her father's trial 
and death in a very touching manner, next describes her 
mother's mute despair, and her aunt's pious resignation, and 
thus proceeds: "On the 3d of July, 1793, the municipal 
officers read to us a decree of the convention that my brother 
should be separated from us. As soon as he heard this, he 
threw himself into the arms of my mother, and entreated, 
with violent cries, not to be separated iirom her. My mother 
was struck to the earth by this cruel order : she would not 
part with her son, and she actually defended, against the ef- 
forts of the officers, the bed on which shi had placed him 
My mother exclaijned, they had better kill her than tear hei 



CoNr.) LOUIS XVI. 519 

son from lier. An hour was spent in resistance on her part. 
in threats and insults from the officers, and in prayers and 
tears on the part of us all. At last they threatened the lives 
of both him and me, and my mother's maternal tenderness at 
length forced her to this sacrifice. My aunt and I dressed 
the child, for my poor mother had no longer strength lor any 
thing : nevertheless, when he was dressed, she took him and 
delivered him into the hands of the officers, bathing him with 
her tears, and foreseeing that she should never see him again. 
The poor little fellow embraced us all tenderly, and was car- 
ried off in a flood of tears." 

Mary. Ah 1 mamma, you did right to warn us that it 
was a very sad history. 

Mrs. M. The poor, heart-broken mother never looked up 
after the loss of her son. She would sit whole hours in silent 
despair, and her only consolation was to go to the leads of the 
tower; "because," says the princess, "my brother went 
there too from the other side. The only pleasure my mother 
enjoyed was seeing him through a chink as he passed at a 
distance. She would watch at the chink for hours together, 
to see the child as he passed. It was her only hope, her 
only thought. But this mournful satisfaction she was soon 
deprived of" About a month after the poor boy was taken 
away, she was roused from her bed at two o'clock one morn- 
ing by some commissioners, who ordered her to rise, teUing 
her that they were come to convey her to the Conciergerie, 
which was a place of confinement for prisoners of the lowest 
and most infamous description. The poor queen was obliged 
to rise and dress before these men, who searched her pockets, 
and took every thing «ut of them. They, however, allowed 
her, as a great favor, to retain her pocket-handkerchief and 
ner smelling-bottle, lest she should be faint by the way. She 
was scarcely suffered to take a hurried leave of her sister and 
daughter. As she waa passing through a low door-way, she 
struck her forehead, and one of the men asked her if she wa? 
hurt. Her reply was. " Nothing can hurt me now." 

On her arrival at the Conciergerie she was placed in a 
gloomy, damp cell, where she had not even t'ae comfort o\ 
enduring her sorrows alone. A police officer was stationeri 
in her cell night and day, who never lost sighl of her. The 
two princesses were now left sad and disconsolate in their 
tower. They were /cept in ignorance of the queen's condition, 
but knowmg how x^iuch she had always been accustomed 1o 
beifjilT her Rur/r.rirg ^^y work, they besought permission to 



S20 LOUIS XVI. LUhap. XXXVIIl. 

send her some materials They collected all the silks and 
worsted they could find, and also a pair of little stockings 
which she had begun to knit for the dauphin. But these 
things she was not permitted to have, under pretense that 
she might destroy herself with the knitting needles. The 
queen's industry, however, overcame all impediments. She 
found a piece of an old carpet in her cell, which she unravel- 
led, and by mean,s of two bits of wood she contrived to knit 
these ravelings into garters. 

In the mean time the poor dauphin was placed under the 
care of Simon, a creature of Robespierre. This man stripped 
the boy of the suit of mourning which had been given him 
for his father, and dressed him in a red cap and coarse jacket, 
such as was worn in France by the children of the poor. He 
made him drink intoxicating liquors, he taught him blasphe- 
mous oaths and revolutionary songs, and obliged him to repeal 
them at the windows, that he might be heard by the soldiers 
In short, no pains were spared to vitiate his character and 
destroy his health. In a few months, this lovely boy, who 
had been gifted by nature with an excellent constitution. 
became a miserable object, diseased and stupified by ill treat- 
ment. But still he must have retained a surprising degree 
of firmness for a child of his tender age, if the following anec- 
dote is true. It appears that his artful keepers had drawn 
from him some expressions, which they chose to interpret as 
impeaching the conduct of the queen and the princess Eliza- 
beth, and that they compelled him to sign a deposition 
against them. The prince was so excessively grieved at tho 
use thus made of his words, that he formed a resolution never to 
speak again ; and this resolution he persisted in for a length 
of time, although threats, and promises of fruit and toys, and 
every thing that could be most tempting to a child, were 
employed to make him break it. 

George. What a dear little fellow ! 

Mrs. M. On January 19, 1794, Simon, who had till then 
been his companion, left him, and the princess thus continues 
her narrative. " Unheard of, unexampled barbarity I to leave 
an unhappy and sickly child of eight years old in a great 
room locked and bolted. He had indeed a bell, which he 
never rung, so greatly did he fear the people whom its sound 
would have brought to him. He preferred wanting any 
thing and every thing to calling his persecutors. His bed 
was not stirred for six months, and he had not strength to 
make it himself For more than a year he had no change of 



Co^:v.J 1.0UIS XVI. 52i 

shirt or stockings. He might indeed have washed himself, 
for he had a pitchei of water, and migh: have kept himself 
cleaner than he did : but, overwhelmed hy the ill treatment 
he had received, he had not the resolution to do so, and hia 
illness began to deprive him of even the necessary sti'ength. 
He passed his days without any occupation, and in the even- 
ing was allowed no light. His situation affected his mind as 
well as his body." 

In this pitiable condition he continued to exist till the fcl- 
iowing November, when the arrival of two new jailers of 
more humane dispositions, brought an amelioration of his un- 
happy condition. Their first care was to procure him anoth- 
er bed, and one of them, named Garnier, would freqiiently sit 
with him whole hours trying to amuse him. The poor boy, 
who had long been unused to kindness, soon became very 
fond of him. But these attentions came too late to save the 
life of this innocent victim, although his disease, having to 
contend with a naturally strong constitution, made its way 
by very slow degrees, and he lingered till the following June. 

Ricliard. It is a great comfort to think that there was 
some person who was kind and good to him at the last. 

Mary. Will you just finish the story about the tvvo prin- 
cesses who were left in the tower ? and then I shall not want 
to know any thing more of that horrible Revolution. 

Mr&. M. They were suffered to remain in the same pris 
on to support and console each other, till May, 1794, when, 
as you have already been told, the princess Elizabeth was 
brought to her short trial, and was condemned and executed 
This princess, who is often called, "the saintlike Elizabeth," 
carried with her to the grave the same calm and dignified 
virtue which had always marked her life ; and that piety, 
which in her youth had been her staff in all the mazes of a 
frivolous court, was her firm support in the rugged path she 
had now to tread. In all the afflictions of her family, it was 
to her they always looked for support and consolation. She 
is described as having retained, under every exigency, a holy 
serenity of countenance and demeanor, which had more in it 
of heaven than of earth, and which on many occasions made 
the wretches who were loading the rest of the royal family 
with abuse, shrink from insulting her. " When condemned 
to death," says her niece, " she desired to be placed in the 
game room with the persons who were to suffer with her. 
She exhorted them with a presence of mind, an elevation of 
soul, and religious enthusiasm, which fortified all their minds 



Vi^ 



TH 2 REPUBLIC. 



[Chap. XXXIX 



In the cart v/liich convey&i her to the place of execution, she 
preserved the same firmness, and encouraged and supported 
the women who accompanied her. She Idssed them, and 
with her usual benignity said some words of comfort to each.'' 
In her last moments, as in the whole of her preceding life, 
she v»^as more occupied with the sorrows of others than with 
her own. 

After the death of her aunt, the young princess remained 
for six months the solitary tenant of her gloomy tower. When 
she first arrived at Vienna, her friends there used every 
endeavor to cheer her ; but her spirits were so completely 
depressed by all she had undergone, that it was more than a 
year before she was seen to smile ; and, indeed, I am told that 
the expression of melancholy has never been entirely effaced 
from her countenance. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

THE REPUBLIC. 
[Years after Christ, 1793-1805 ] 




TOWEK OF THE TeMPLK 



D^niN J the progress of these events in Paris, the duke of 
Brunswick, who aftcir taking Verdun and Longwy, had for a 



AD ir93.] THE REPUBLIC. 52S 

short tim"; continued to advance siowdy toward the capita], 
was compelled to retreat. His confident hope, that many ol 
the French would join his standard, had turned out to be 
utterly unfounded He found himself opposed, not, as he had 
expected, by a mere rabble, but by a disciplined army. Gen- 
eral Dumouriez had the command of this army. He, after 
forcing the duke to commence his retreat, retook Verdmi on 
the 12th, and Longwy on the ISth of October, 1792. An 
i^.ustrian army, also, which had commenced the siege of Lille 
v:as compelled to raise it. Spires and Worms were taken, 
and Mentz capitulated. On the 6th of November, Dumou- 
riez gained at Gemappe a victory which decided the fate of 
the Austrian Netherlands, the whole of which, with the ex- 
ception of Luxemburg, fell immediately into the hands of the 
French. War had been also declared against the king oi" 
Sardinia, and the French troops took possession of Savoy. 

On the 1st of February 1793, the convention declared war 
against England and Holland, and on the 7th of March 
against Spain. Dumouriez attacked Holland, and took Breda 
on the 24th of February, Klundert on the 26th, and Gertruy- 
denberg on the 4th of March. From this point he retreated, 
and his retreat exciting a suspicion that he had been brought 
over to act in concert with the allies, the convention sent 
commissioners to supersede and arrest him. Dumouriez him- 
self, however, arrested these commissioners, and sent them as 
prisoners to the Austrian general at Tournay ; to whose quar- 
ters he himself soon afterward made his escape, after vainly 
attempting to prevail on his army to take part with him 
against the convention. On the 4th of April, which was 
before Dumouriez left his army, and while he was still hoping 
to induce the troops to join with him, the prince of Saxe Co- 
burg, on the part of the allies, issued a declaration, that to 
restore a constitutional monarchy in France was the only ob- 
ject of the war, and that he absolutely disclaimed all inten- 
tion of conquest. He had the weakness, four days afterward, 
when the schemes of Dumouriez had miscarried, to revoke his 
declaration, and to say that he would not be bound by it. 

Conde and Valenciennes surrendered in July to the allied 
army under the command of the duke of York, and were taken 
possession of in the name of the emperor. The duke after- 
ward made an attack on Dunkirk, but failed, and in the lat- 
ter part of the year the French gained the ascendency in 
Flanders. On the Rhine, also, the French armies ujidei 
Hocbe and Pichegru, repulsed, after a most bloody campaign. 



524 THfcJ REPUBLIC. [Chap X3 tlX 

the Prussians and Imperialists under Gei.cral Wurmser and 
the duke of Brunswick. Toulon submitted to an English 
fleet under Lord Hood, on condition that the town and ship- 
ping should be preserved as a deposit for Louis XVII. A 
mixed body of men, Neapolitans, English, and Spaniards, 
were brought into the town to defend it. But an army of 
the convention being sent to besiege it, and a fort which pro 
tected the town being taken by assault, it became necessary 
to abandon the place suddenly, and the most horrible confu- 
sion and destruction ensued. Of 31 ships found in the port 
by the English, 13 were left behind, 10 were burned, and 
they were able to extricate only three ships of the line and 
five frigates. 

In Paris, in the mean time, every day seemed to increase 
the vehemence of the factions by which the convention was 
distracted. The Jacobins at length usurped a tyrannical 
power, and every sympton of moderation fell before them, 
feome resistance to their usurpations was indeed madejn the 
provinces. Lyons, in particular, broke into open insurrection. 
This great city, after sustaining a siege for two months, was, 
on the 9th of October, compelled to surrender to the conven- 
tional troops, who disgraced their victory by horrid massa 
cres. 

In this year were also perpetrated the massacres of La 
Vendee. The inhabitants of that department, and of the 
neighboring districts, forming altogether a large portion of the 
ancient province of Poitou, with some adjoining parts of An- 
jou and Bretagne, were a people of simple and primitive 
habits, and strongly attached to the ancient system of govern- 
ment. In 1792, they made some efforts to raise an army for 
the purpose of restoring the royal authority. In the following 
year, almost the whole population rose en 9nasse with enthu- 
siasm. The country was intricate, and afforded every advant- 
age to the operations of an armed and active peasantry, who, 
though little able to encounter disciplined troops in the field, 
yet were extremely formidable in detached bodies, and in 
sudden incursions, carried on in their own country, and that a 
country full of hills and morasses. The relations which we 
possess of the events of this war in La Vendee have a great- 
er portion of romantic feeling connected with them than those 
of almost any other since the age of chivalry ; but the relent- 
less carnage is too horrible to be dwelt upon. The armies of 
ihe convention were at length completely successful ; and the 
barbarities almost exceed belief, which were inflicted on lh« 



A..D. ]7S)4.J THE REPUBLIC. 52S 

conquered party. One savage invention v^fhich xvas practiced 
at Nantes was t«j shut up a number of victims in the hold 
of a vessel, which w^as so constructed as to open suddenly and 
plunge into the water the persons contained in it. This was 
called the noyade, and was much approved of by the conven 
tion. An armament from England was sent to assist tho 
Vendeans, but it did not arrive on the coast till too late, and 
was obliged to return without attempting to land. 

I fear that in this short history I have akeady said too 
much of the atrocious crimes by which the Revolution was 
disgraced. Though much more remains, I will spai'e your 
feelings for the future. But that you may not fail to observe 
how closely crime and impiety are allied, I must here add that 
the convention, in the midst of its career of savage barbarity, 
attempted to extirpate also all regard to religion. On the 
lOth of November an edict was passed, declaring that the 
French nation "acknowledged no worship but that of univer- 
sal morahty, nor any other dogma but that of its own sover- 
eignty and omnipotence." To disunite, if possible, religious 
hope even from death, it is enacted in the same edict, that, 
"every citizen deceased, of whatsoever sect, shall be carried 
to the place destined for common interment covered with a 
funeral vail, on which shall be a picture of sleep. The com- 
mon place of burial shall be separate from ail dwellings, and 
planted with trees, under the shade of which shall be a statue 
representing sleep, and on the door of the inclosure shall be 
inscribed 'Death is an eternal sleejy.' " An attempt was made 
afterward to revive the Pagan games, processions, and idola- 
tries. The commune of Paris decreed that instead of pulpits, 
public tribunes should be erected, where republican principles 
should be preached ; and they celebrated in the cathedral of 
Paris a festival in honor of Reason, to whom, as to a deity, 
the building was now dedicated. Busts were erected to sev- 
eral infidels, and a woman of bad reputation was introduced 
in the person or character of the Goddess of Reason. This 
woman, in an arm-chair borne by four men, was carried with 
great parade to the convention. She was surrounded with 
oak garlands ; she was escorted by women in white robes, and 
attended by martial music ; the cap of liberty was placed 
upon her head; she was corered with a thin vail, and she 
leaned upon a pike. There was an harangue in her praise, 
and in honor of the ceremony ; she received the fraternal kiss 
from the president and secretaries of the convention, and a 
great i '.imbcr cf the members mixed with the mob, and re- 



ftSG THE KEPUBLIC. L^hap. XXXIX 

paired to the goddess's temple, to assist in tlie festival, and 
join in the hymn to liberty. 

So imnatural a state of feeling, ho we ver, could not long be 
pop\ilar. Tlie commune of Paris ordered the churches to be 
shut up ; but the convention found it necessary to annul the 
order. On this occasion even the infamous Robespierre made 
a speech, from which it would seem that he was not wholly 
destitute of all sense of religion. 

This daring republican, who had long been a prominent 
member, became, in 1794, the absolute ruler of the conven 
tion. Ambitious of power, and perhaps seeing that he would 
fall a victim to the ambition of others, if he did not himself 
obtain the mastery, he brought to trial on the 25th of March, 
in this year, not less than twenty of the Jacobin leaders, who 
were condemned and executed on the following day. On the 
2d of April, he brought to trial nine more, and these also 
were all executed on the 5th. Robespierre himself, however, 
in this perilous career, soon appeared to have risen only to fall 
The members of the convention, each jealous of being the 
next sacrifice, united against him as in defense of their com- 
mon safety, made him their prisoner on the 28th of July, and 
had him executed in the course of the day. With him ended 
what has justly been termed the reign of terror. Councils 
more moderate, and men, who, if not of honester principles, 
were yet in nature or policy less bloody and detestable, arc 
now to take their place on the scene. 

The reign of terror had given an intense vigor to the war 
carrying on against the foreign enemies. Immense resources 
were placed in the power of the state by the confiscation of 
the property of the wretched victims of its tyranny ; and 
these were employed with the greatest activity by the intrepid 
officers who rose to command in the army, at a time when no 
man could be ambitious or commanding, who was not of the 
hardest and most decisive character. 

In the campaign of 1794, the French conquered all Flan 
ders, they overran the Palatinate, and took Treves. The' 
also took Coblentz, Venlo, and Maestricht, and obtained pos 
session of almost the whole frontiers of Holland. In Spaiu 
they took Fontarabia, and St. Sebastian, and other places, 
which laid entirely open to them the provinces of Navarre 
and Catalonia. During the following winter a frost of un- 
common severity enabled them to cross the Waal on the ice, 
and to advance rapidly into the very heart of the Dutch ter 
litories, without encountering any eflcctual opposition. Th*j^ 



\.D. 1705.1 THE REPUBLIC. W7 

took possession of Amsterdam, Jan 16, 1795. The fleet and 
shipping were fixed by the intense frost, and fell an unresist- 
ing prey. There are several points of comparison between 
this conquest of Holland and that which was effected by the 
arms of Lou'.s XIV., but this was incomparably the most 
rapid and complete. The stadtholder and his family fled to 
England ; and Holland, from this time till the end of the 
wars of the Revolution, became an absolute dependency on 
France. 

On the 1st of June, 1794, lord Howe engaged the I'rench 
fleet off Ushant, and after a severe action took seven sail of 
the line. Twc sail were sunk. Scarcely any attempt was 
made after this defeat to contest with England the empire ol 
the sea. Many of the French seamen were marched off to 
join the armies, and the marine fell, of course, into cornpara 
tive neglect. All the French West India islands were cap- 
tured by England, with the exception of a part of Guadaloupe. 
The Corsicans, also, being much dissatisfied with the new 
government, made the veteran Paoli once more their general- 
issimo, and with the assistance of an English force expelled 
the French from their island. 

In 1795 peace was made with Prussia and Spain, France 
restoring to Spain her original frontier on the river Bidassoa. 
and Spain ceding in return the Spanish portion of St. Do- 
mingo. In the following year Spain returned to her old pol- 
icy of an alliance ofl^ensive and defensive with France, and 
of course, took part with France in the war. 

In June, 1795, an attempt v/as made by the emigrants U 
renew the unhappy war in La Vendee, where neAv commo- 
tions had been attempted, and the inhabitants were known to 
De m a very discontented state. The emigrant army, under 
tlie escort of an English squadron, disembarked in the bay of 
Quiberon, in the end of June, and Avas joined by many. of the 
insurgents, who, from the nature of the hostility which alone 
they had been able of late to carry on, had often the title 
given them of Chouans, or iiiglit otvls. The republican 
troops, however, soon repulsed the invaders, and almost ab 
perished who were not able to re-embark. 

The military operations of this year on the side of Ger 
many were not of importance enough to make it necessary 
that I should relate them to you in this brief sketch of g* 
eventful a war. 

The national convention, after many convulsions of party, 
and some sanguinary engagements with the opposing factions, 



SS3 THE KEPUB.LIC. [CHAf. XXXIX 

temiinated, Oct. 27, 1795, its disgraceful career. A nev/ 
constitution succeeded, by which the legislature was divided 
into two assemblies. The one of these was called the council 
of the ancients, and consisted of 250 members, all of whom 
were at least to be forty years old. The other assembly was 
called the council of the five hundred. The council of the 
five hundred alone could propose any laws. The council of 
the ancients might either reject or accept, but could not alter, 
any decrees which might pass the five hundred. The execu- 
tive power was placed in the hands of a directory, consisting 
of five members, of whom it was appointed that one member 
should go out every year. Barras, Carnot, Rewbell, Reveil- 
lere Lepaux, and Letourneur were the first members. Sieyes 
had been elected, but though he became a member afterward, 
he was too prudent, at this critical time, to venture to accept 
any station of power. 

In the spring of 1796, tlii'ee great armies took the field : 
the army of the Sambre and Meuse, under general Jourdan ; 
the army of the Rhine and Moselle, under Moreau ; and the 
army of Italy, of v/hich the command was given to Bona- 
parte, a native of Corsica, and a godson of Paoli. Bonaparte 
had distinguished himself at the capture of Toulon from the 
English, and had afterward been brought forward by the di- 
rector Barras. The campaign in Italy raised at once this ex- 
traordinaiy man to great distinction. He annexed Savoy to 
France ; ,he defeated the Austrians at Lodi, where he storm- 
jd their position on the bridge over the Adda, which was so 
strongly defended that even his own officers thought it im- 
pregnable ; and at length established the French ascendency 
throughout Italy. Many of the states were compelled to 
purchase an armistice, by sacrificing the finest paintings or 
statues with which their palaces and museums were stored. 
These were ^:)wi in reqvAsition, as was the plu-ase, by order of 
the convention, and were transported to Paris, where, for a 
period of nearly twenty years, they formed a most splendid and 
attractive ornament of that triumphant metropolis. Mantua 
alone held out for the imperialists. 

In Germany, Moreau and Jourdan, combining their opera- 
lions, compelled the archdulce Charles, the Austrian general, 
after a hardly-contested campaign, to retreat, and to cross the 
Neckar and Danube. The minor states of the empire, and 
even the diet at E-alisbon, were compelled to solicit peEice 
with the republic. England and the emperor were ihe only 
powers which still cci.tinued the contest 



A.D 1797.) THE REPUBLIC. 5'-':) 

liut the archduke Cliarles, in this onergeucy, exerted bim- 
seif with great and firm resolution. He first repulsed Jour- 
dan, and then menaced Moreau, to whom Bonaparte, who 
was detained in Italy by the siege of Mantua, and by the 
atternpts uf the Austrians to recover their interests in that 
quarter, wab wholly unable to send assistance. Moreau. 
however, extiicated himself, and effected a retreat into France, 
which has httix greatly celebrated for the ability with which 
he conducted it. 

In the end cf this year, an ill-concerted expedition was 
dispatched from i'rance for the invasion of Ireland. General 
Hoche commanded, and 25,000 men were embarked. They 
reached Bantry Bay, but returned to Brest, without making 
any attempt to land. This expedition having failed, the di- 
rectory was at a groxt loss how to dispose of some of the 
troops embarked in it, many of whom had been permitted to 
enter the service after having been condemned for their 
crimes to the galleys. These troops could not be remanded 
to the galleys ; they could not prudently be restored to liberty ; 
they could not be drafted into the other armies of the repub- 
lic, because soldiers of the better classes would not serve with 
them. In this perplexity they were again embarked on a 
new expedition ; and this nothing less than the invasion of 
Great Britain itself They were landed at Fisguard m 
Wales on the 23d of Februarj^ 1797, and were made prison- 
ers the same evening without opposition. 

Mantua capitnlated Feb. 2, 1797, and Italy soon afte^ 
was reduced to quiet submission, and even to tolerate the 
plunder of the chapel of Loretto, whence the famous image 
of the Virgin was taken and sent to Paris. Italy being sub- 
dued, Bonaparte marched along the Adriatic, took Gradisca 
on the 19th of March, and Trieste on the 23d. Thence ad- 
vancing rapidly, he passed the defiles of the Alpine country 
which protects the Italian frontier of Germany, and alarmed 
the Austrians for the safety of Vienna. Under these circum- 
stances a negotiation was entered into, and a peace eventual- 
ly concluded with the emperor, by the treaty of Campo For- 
niio, on the 17th of October. France by this treaty retained 
the Austrian Netherlands. Milan, Mantua, Modena, Fer- 
rara, and Bologna were formed into a mere dependency on 
France, and entitled the Cisalpine republic. The Venetian 
islands, Corfu, Zante, and their dependencies were also sur- 
rendered to Franne : but the emperor was put in possession 
cf Veu'ce, and of its territory on both sides of the gulf, in- 

Z 



5-30 THE REPUBLIC. [Chi?. XXXIX' 

eluding Dalmatia, and reacliing as far as thel/ake di. Garda. 
Genoa was converted into a Ligurian republic soon after 
ward. 

Early in 1798, the French took possession of Rome, and 
deposed the pope. At the same time they also invaded 
Switzerland, though Switzerland had observed the most sin- 
cere neutrality in the doubtful contest which had been lately 
closed in Germany. The war with Switzerland could not 
last long The hardy mountaineers of the smaller cantons 
made a brief but desperate struggle for their independence. 
But they were soon subdued by superior numbers and skill, 
and a new constitution was forced on them after the model 
of France. 

England was now the only enemy of the republic. In 
August, this year, a small body of troops was dispatched 
from France into Ireland, in order to ibment a rebellioi' 
which was raging in that distracted island. This body, 
however, was soon compelled to surrender. 

To attack England in her vast ( iminions in the East In 
dies was a chief object of the dir*;tory. This appears at 
least to have been the ostensible design of an expedition 
which was dispatched to Eg3rpt in June, 1798, under the 
command of Bonaparte. The possession of that country 
might afford an access to India, which a power decidedly in- 
ferior at sea could not hope for in the long passage round the 
Cape. Some suppose, however, that the real motive of the 
expedition was to rid the directory of Bonaparte and his army, 
by sending them on this doubtful adventure. Nothing can 
be more likely than that the character of that general had 
already disclosed to those who were best acquainted with him 
a towering ambition, which would never be satisfied as long 
as there remained a greater than himself. 

Be this as it may, Bonaparte embarked at Toulon witl 
40,000 of his veteran troops. In his way to Egypt he ob 
tained possession of Malta, which, it is supposed, was betrayed 
to him by the knights. He then sailed for Alexandria : he 
landed, and took the city by storm on the 5th of July. His 
luck in getting there without being intercepted by the English 
lleet is very remarkable. The French marine had never re- 
covered its defeat in the action of June 1st, 1794, and had! 
indeed also suffered subsequent losses. The allied fleet of 
Spain had been defeated on its way to Brest, in an engage- 
ment fought on the 14th of February, 1797 ; and the Dutcl 
also, whoso whole power had now joined the republic. ha<f 



fl.D. 1798.] THE REPUBLIC 531 

seen their fleet almost destroyed in a sanguinary conflict •with 
the English on October 11, in the same jear, near Camper 
down. 

The design on Egypt had been in a great degree disguised 
by demonstrations made at Brest, and on the coast of tho 
Channel, which appeared to have for their object the inva- 
sion of England. Huge rafts, which were to be impelled by 
paddles and wind-mills, were said to be constructed for the 
])urpose of transporting an army ; and various other absurd 
stories were circulated, which doubtless were chiefly intended 
to divert attention from the serious preparations which were 
making at Toulon. The English admiral. Nelson, however, 
than whom no age has ever produced an abler commander, 
was appointed to watch the fleet at Toulon. He actually 
pursued it from Malta to Alexandria : but the French hav- 
ing steered their course by the island of Candia, the Englisl, 
who kept the direct line toward Egypt, missed their enemies, 
and reached Alexandria before them. Not finding them 
there, they left the coast immediately, and went in search of 
them. Two days after they were gone, the French fleet 
arrived. 

After taking Alexandria, Bonaparte marched up the coun 
try, and took Cairo. He defeated the Mamelukes in severaj 
engagements, one of the principal of which is called the bat- 
tle of the Pyramids, from having been fought in the imme- 
diate neighborhood of those massy structures. 

On the 1st of August, admiral Nelson returned, and at 
sunset on that day began his attack on the French fleet, 
which lay at anchor in Aboukir Bay, at the mouth of the 
Nile. In this great battle the whole French fleet was de- 
stroyed or taken ; two ships of the line only and two frigates 
escaping. These also fell afterward into the hands of the 
English. 

Bonaparte, though thus shut up in Egypt by the destruction 
of a fleet which he had no means of replacing, soon made 
himself master of the whole country. From Egypt he, in 
the following year, marched into Palestine, and laid siege to 
Acre, which was valiantly defended by Sir Sydney Smith, a 
captain in the English navy, who had prevailed on the Turk- 
ish pasha to give him the command of the garrison. The 
French general, after having made eleven attempts to take 
tho town by assault, and after having lost almost half of tht 
troops he had taken with him, was at length compelled tt 
raise the siege. I'lom Acre lie retreated to Egypt, where ha 



^32 THE REPUBLIC; | Chap. XXXIX. 

had to encounter a Turldsli army whic'ti had been dispatched 
Dy sea from Constantinople. He destroyed this whole army 
m a dreadful battle at Aboukir, which was fought on the 
25th day of July, 1799. 

Bonaparte soon afterward returned to France with a few 
of his officers, leaving General Kleber in command of the ar- 
my in Egypt, whicla was now reduced to about eighteen 
thousand men. In his passage to France he narrowly es- 
caped being taken. Few occurrences in history have appear- 
ed more mysterious than that he should thus, without orders, 
have deserted his army. No one can doubt, however, but 
that his real object was to push his own way to the supreme 
authority. 

After many obscure and intricate transactions, the two le 
gislative bodies were adjourned to St. Cloud, which is at the 
distance of about six miles from Paris. On the lOth of No- 
vember, 1799, Bonaparte, accompanied by about twenty offi- 
cers and grenadiers, entered the hall of the council of five 
hundred. In this perhaps he imitated the example which 
had been set in England during the commonwealth, when 
Cromwell dissolved the long parliament. After a great tu- 
mult, a body of troops made their appearance, and the mem- 
bers of the council were ordered to disperse. The final result 
of this new change in the constitution was to abolish the di- 
rectory, and to vest the executive power in one chief consul , 
with two other consuls assisting liim. Bonaparte, Camba- 
ceres, and Le Brun were named consuls, Bonaparte from this 
time assuming the title of first consul of the republic. 

During the course of these events, the flames of war again 
broke out on the continent. After the great victoiy of admiral 
Nelson over the French fleet, the emperor, encouraged by 
that event, wlxich shut up in Egypt the formidable army of 
Bonaparte, and stimulated by the English minister Mr. Pitt, 
who spared no efibrts to excite a new alliance against France, 
determined to xenew hostilities. The king of Naples did not 
even wait fo;: the Austrians. He himself went to receive 
admiral Neison on his arrival in the Bay of Naples after the 
battle of the Nile, and immediately afterward commenced 
warlike operations against the French army in Italy. He 
had at first some success, and his army occupied Home, but 
was soon compelled to retreat precipitately. The king antl 
his family were obliged to retire on board the English fleet, 
hy which they were conveyed to Palermo. The French soon 
iiiiterward became the uncontested masters of almost all Italy 



AD. 1799.] THE REPUBLIC &.« 

The king of Prussia and the greater number of the- Ger- 
man princes determined to be neutral in the impending con 
test with Austria, but Russia dispatched to the aid of that; 
power an army of 45,000 men, under the celebrated Suwar- 
row, who was invested with the command of the combined 
armies. Moreau and Macdonald *were opposed to Suwarrow, 
and the north of Italy, the scene of this great contest, was 
deluged with blood in a very hard-fought campaign. Suwai- 
row, who had a great superiority of force, acquired for a time 
the advantage. Almost all Italy fell into the hands of tho 
Austrians, and it was thought that Suwarrow would have 
wrested Switzerland from France, if his allies had not failed 
to support him. Being left unsupported, he was repulsed by 
the French general Massena. On this the emperor of Rus- 
sia, believing that the Austrians had perfidiously deserted his 
general, withdrew from the coalition against France. In 
August, 1799, a considerable English army, under the com- 
mand of Sir Pvalph Abercromby, landed at the Helder point, 
near the entrance of the Zuyder Zee, in the hope of acquiring 
possession in Holland. But the expedition was either ill-con 
certed or badly managed, and at length, after great loss, the 
English were compelled to retire. 

We may now proceed with the history of Bonaparte, who 
was made first consul, Dec. 29, 1799. He soon afterward 
made overtures of peace to the allied powers. In making 
tht*e overtures he was much suspected of insincerity ; and 
they were accordingly rejected both by England and Austria. 
It was particularly remarked that he had made his overture 
to England in a letter addressed to the king personally, and 
not according to the ordinary forms by which diplomatic cor- 
respondence is regulated. 

In the campaign of 1800 Moreau was successful in Ger- 
many, and this partly, as is supposed, through the disunion 
and treachery of the army which was opposed to him undei 
general Kray. Bonaparte himself took the command of the 
army of Italy ; he passed the Alps, and gained on the 14th 
of June the great battle of Marengo. In this battle victory 
seemed for a long time inclined to determine for the Austrians ; 
'and it is said that Bonaparte at one moment wavered ; but 
the battle was recovered by the gallantry of general Desaix, 
who with a fresh body of cavalry charged at the critical mo- 
ment, and by this one act gave that superiority to the French 
arms which the Austrians were on the very point of gaining, 
(icneral Desaix was killed in the action. The Austrians soon 



■53 5 TBL RErUBLIC. [Chap. XXXIX 

after solicited aa armistice ; but the war recornmeuced, and 
they were again defeated by Moreau at Hohenlinden. An- 
other armistice followed, and negotiations were immediately 
entered into. These were at length concluded by a separate 
peace vith the emperor, which was signed at Luneville on 
the 9th February, 1801. By this treaty the empeior recog- 
nized the independence of the Batavian, the Swiss, the Cisal- 
pine, and the Ligurian republics. Peace was restored soon 
afterward with Naples and Portugal. 

England also now made attempts to negotiate ; but th«: 
state of affairs in Egypt, which was still in possession of the 
French army, and against which England had dispatched a 
powerful armament, proved for a time an insurmountable 
obstacle to peace. I must here return to give you an account 
of what took place in Egypt after Bonaparte's leaving it in 
August, 1799. 

General Kleber, as I have told you, who was a man of ver\- 
high character, had been left in command of the French army. 
He and the grand vizier concluded a convention at Ei Arish 
on the 24th of January, 1800, to which Sir Sydney Smith 
undertook to accede on the part of England. By this con- 
vention Egypt was to be restored to the Porte ; but it was 
agreed that the French army should be conveyed to France. 
This convention, which Sir Sydney Smith had no authority 
to sanction, was disavowed at first by the English govern- 
ment, which was unwilling to allow that the French troops 
iu Egypt should be restored to their own country, whence 
they might be marched instantly either into Italy or to the 
Rhine. On the rupture of the convention, Kleber again at- 
tacked the Turks, and again defeated them in another great 
battle near Cairo. Another treaty to the same effect with 
that of El Arish was then entered into, and on the point of 
being concluded, when Kleber was assassinated — by whose 
instigation is not known. General Menou, who succeeded 
him, refused to leave Egypt, and no alternative remained to 
the English but to expel him. 

With this object in view, Sir Ralph Abercromby was dis- 
patched from England at the head of a considerable and well- 
appointed army. On March 7, 1801, he began his disem- 
barkation in the Bay of Aboukir, in the face of a large body 
of French troops posted advantageously to receive him. After 
a sharp contest the English made good their landing. One 
battle took place on the 13th, and another on the 21st, near 
Alevandria. ;'n which the Ensfligh commander-in-chief was 



A.D. 1803.] THE REPUISLIC. ii'.ii 

mortally wounded. On both days, however, the English arms 
were successful. 

On the death of Sir Ralph Abercrornby, lord Ilutchinsott 
Bucceeded to his command. An auxiliary army also arrived 
from India by the Red Sea. Rosetta and Cairo fell into th« 
Lands of the English ; and Menou, who still held out in Al- 
exandria, consented at length to accept the terms which had 
been previously ofiered, and was conveyed with his araiy to 
the ports of France. 

The war in Egypt being thus concluded, no material im- 
pediment to the peace with England seemed to remain. Pre- 
liminaries were signed in London, Oct. 1, 1801, and a defini- 
tive treaty concluded afterward at Amiens, March 25th, 
1802. By this treaty England agreed to give up all her con- 
quests, with the exception of Ceylon, which she had taken 
from the Dutch, and Trinidad, which had been taken from 
Spain. Malta was to be restored to the knights of St. John 
of Jerusalem. To France were restored all her West Indian 
possessions, all of which had been taken by England during 
the war, with the exception of St. Domingo, where the negroes 
had emancipated themselves, and had established a republic 
of their own. 

It soon became evident that the peace would not be per- 
manent. Preparations were made in the ports of France and 
Holland, which, though professedly intended for the reduction 
of St. Domingo, appeared too extensive not to have some 
greater design. The first consul, now all powerful in France, 
felt great jealousy of the ambition of England ; and England, 
on the other hand, was not less suspicious of his character and 
sincerity. 

Hostilities w^ere recommenced. May, 18th, 1803, by the 
issue of letters of marque by the English government, and an 
embargo on all French vessels in English ports. This prompt 
hostility, without a declaration of war, Bonaparte resented, 
by arresting all British subjects, who were to be found in 
France or in Holland. Many of these were persons in the 
higher ranlis of society, who had been tempted by the restora- 
tion of peace to travel or take up their residence on the conti- 
nent. Many were officers in the army or navy, whose de- 
tention in France precluding their employment in their 
country's service necessarily operated as a bar to their promo- 
tion. Many were the captains and crews of merchant vessels 
which had been found in the ports of Holland or France. Of 
tl>viP prisoners the higher and middling ranks were mostiv 



636 THE EEPUBLIC. [Chap. XXXiA 

sent to Verdun, where they were allowed to Le on their parolfc. 
Some few oiEcers made their escape, aiid got home ; hut the 
English government refused to employ them again, on account 
of their having broken their parole. It must be allowed that 
their case was exceedingly hard, especially since it differed 
from a common case of captivity, as being one in which they 
v/ere almost hopeless of liberation. In ordinary circumstances, 
a prisoner of war may always expect to be soon exchanged ; 
but these d'etemis were not prisoners of war ; and the English 
government, which denied the justice of their seizure, would 
not recognize it by consenting to give French prisoners in ex- 
change. Nothing, however, can justify a breach of parole : 
when a man's word is once given, no consideration should in- 
duce him to break it. The practice also of allowing prisoners 
to be at large on giving their word that they will not attempt 
to escape, is so material an alleviation of captivity, that I 
hardly know how any man can do more injury to his fellow- 
creatures than by acting so as to discourage it. 

In the months of May and June the French armies entered 
Hanover, and took possession of it with but little resistance. 
7\t the same time England was again menaced with invasion. 
But the extraordinary events of the new war which was thus 
begun, to which, if we consider not only the vast armies in 
motion, but also the skill with which they were guided, there 
is, 1 believe, no parallel in the anuals of the world, will more 
properly belong to the ensuing chapter. 

I shall here only add, that on May 3, 1804, a decree waa 
passed creating Bonaparte " emperor of the French," and in- 
vesting him in that capacity with the government of the 
French republic. By this decree, also, the imperial title and 
power was made hereditary in his family. His coronation 
took place November 19, pope Pius VII. performing the cer- 
fmony of crowiring him. On the 4th of Februaiy, 1805, the 
new emperor addressed a second letter to the king of England, 
in which he urged him to put an end to the war. Whether 
or no it would have been wise to have answered this letter 
,'miicably is a question which I can not presume to decide. 
The letter itself was very wordy and pompous, and did not 
bear any internal marks of sincerity. On May 26, the empe- 
ror was crowned at Milan king of Italy. Genoa was \inited 
to the empire a few days afterward. 



OOMT.] THE REPVJBLIC. 53T 

CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XXXIX. 




ROBKSPIXRKE AKD DaNTON. 

Richard. Was Robespierre a clever as well as a very 
wicked man? 

Mrs. Markham. I believe he was a man of no extraordi- 
nary talents ; unless, indeed, we may account as a talent the 
art which he possessed of enticing others to crimes, of which 
he generally contrived to reap the benefit. He began the 
world as a lawyer, but was an indifferent orator, and attained 
no eminence in his profession. Early in the Revolution he 
made himself conspicuous as a vehement member of the 
Jacobin party, and appeared to be actuated by a personal 
animosity against the king, and perseveringly aimed at hia 
destruction. 

Mary. Had the king done him any injury ? 

Mrs. M. The king never intentionally injured any one. 
Robespierre's own republican principles appear to have been 
the first, and his ambition to be a dictator the second cause 
of his enmity. Robespierre's chief political rival was Danton, 
and these two men, apparent friends, but secret enemies, 
were, while professing indivisible fraternity, endeavoring to 
compass each other's destruction. At last the superior cun 
ning of Robespierre prevailed, and the ferocious Danton was 
guillotined. 

George. It is a comfort to think that Robespierre was nol 
long after him. 

Mrs. M. ^Vheu Robespierre was seized, he endeavored 
to shoot himself, but he only shattered his jaw. In tha^ 



5b ■ THE REPUBLIC. [Chap. XXXIX 

m >!r,«;led condition he was placed in the cart, and carried to 
thv place of execution amidst the shouts and exultations of tha 
populace, who were frantic with joy at the downfall of tlie 
tyrant. The women, ^ho in all the popular tumults in 
France acted a very conspicuous part, danced hke insane 
.sreatures round the procession. When he arrived at the 
fccaffold he was more dead than alive ; hut on the execu- 
tioner's roughly pulling off a bandage, which had been hasti- 
ly put on his wound, he uttered a horrible shriek ; and it is 
said that of all the executions which were at that time wit- 
nessed at Paris, Robespierre's presented the most appalling 
spectacle. 

Richard. It is surprising to me how executioners enough 
could be found for such a great number of people. 

Mr'i- M. And your surprise will be increased, when I tell 
you that all those executions were performed by two individ 
uals only, of the name of Sampson. These persons, who 
were brothers, shed the blood of Louis XVI., of Marie An- 
toinette, of E-obespierre, and his faction, vsdth equal unconcern. 
They are described as having been little less of machines than 
the guillotine itself; and so that there was but a head to be 
cut off, it mattered not to them whose it was. 

M.ary. Why was that machine for cutting off heads called 
a guillotine ? 

M/rs: M. It obtained its name from one of the most harm- 
less and benevolent of men, a physician of the name of Guil 
lotine, a member of the national assembly, who, on some 
question relating to the amelioration of the penal code, had 
recommended the use of a decapitating machine, as a more 
merciful kind of death than that by the gaUows. 

George. Poor man ! how he must have hated his own 
tiame ! 

Mrs. M. When Guillotine saw the horrible use made of 
his invention, he was overwhelmed with grief, and withdrew 
in disgust from public life. He afterward confined himself 
to the duties of his profession, in which he arrived at great 
eminence. I know not when he died. He was alive in 
1811. 

Mary. Pray, mamma, can you remember the French 
Revolution ? 

Mrs. M. I can recollect of its being the constant topic of 
conversation, although I was then too young to be able tc 
form any very distinct ideas on the subject. I t"»n also jec- 
sUect the hearing accounts read 'n the newsp'"w<5rs of the 



CoHT.l' THE REPUBLIC. 5L"j 

dreadful atiocities taking place in France, which used to 
"curdle my young blood with horror." On my first visit to 
London, I also saw a great number of French emigrants, who 
had found refuge ther^e. 

Mary. Did they seem very unhappy ? 

Mrs. M. They seemed unhappy when you saw them, in 
forlorn and melancholy groups, perambulating, as was their 
custom, the sunny sides of the streets. But, in company, the 
buoyancy of their national character commonly enabled them 
to cast ofF for the moment the load of their afflictions, and 
they would be not only cheerful but even gay. And although, 
in general, we must blame their abandonment of their coun- 
try, yet there were many instances, especially in the advanced 
stages of the Revolution, in which it was a necessary meas- 
ure of self-preservation : nor was it possible to forbear feeling 
respect and admiration for persons situated as they had been, 
who could, support, with a contentedness which was often 
truly dignified, the loss of wealth, rank, country, and consid- 
eration. 

Ridmrd. How did they get money to live on 1 

Mrs. M. Some few brought with them money or jewels 
Others were thrown on the benevolence of the English, and 
very many exerted a praiseworthy industay, and preferred the 
maintaining themselves by their own labor to a dependence 
on the liberality of others, 

George. That was much wiser than if they had sat still 
doing nothing but lamenting their misfortunes. . 

Mrs. M. The French exiles had an illustrious example 
of industry and exertion in the young duke of Orleans,* who, 
after his father's death, took refuge in Switzerland. He there 
assumed the name of M. Corby, and maintained himself for 
more than a year by becoming the m?,thematical teacher in 
a school. 

Mary. I do not at all compreheri how the affairs of 
France could be carried on by such a set of governors as those 
republicans. 

Mrs. M. I can not show you a more forcible picture of 
the spirit by which those governors were actuated than by 
reading to you a letter from Fouche, then cne of the members 
of the committee of pubhc safety, to his friend and colleague, 
Collot d'Herbois. This letter was written at the time of the 
/ictory which was gained by the republicans ovir the royalist* 
ftt l^ouloii 

* Afterward king Lou s Philippe. 



»iQ THE REPUBLIC. l^hai-. XXXI * 

" Tonlon, S8tli of Frimaire, 
"Year 2 of the Republic, one and indivisible. 

" The war is at an end, if we know how to avail ourselves 
of this memorable victory. Let ns be terrible that we may 
not be in danger of being weak or cruel. Let us destroy in 
our wrath, and at one blow, all rebels, conspirators, and trai- 
tors, to spare ourselves the anguish, the tedious misery of pun- 
ishing them as kings. Let us avenge ourselves as a people, 
let us strike like the thunder-bolt, and annihilate even the 
ashes of our enemies, that they may not pollute the soil of 
liberty. 

"May the perfidious English be attacked in all direc 
tions : may the whole republic form but one volcano to over- 
whelm them with its devouring lava ! May the infamous 
isle, which produced these monsters, whom humanity disowns, 
be ingulfed forever in the depths of ocean ! Adieu ! my 
friend : tears of joy gush from my eyes, and inundate my 
soul. 

" FOUCHE. 

" P. S., We have only one way of celebrating the victory 
This evening we send two hundred and thirteen rebels to meet 
death amidst the thunder of our guns " 

Richard. We English are exceedingly obliged to M 
Fouche for his kind wishes toward us. 

Mrs. M. And you may rest assured that the vehement 
passions of the republicans did not exhaust themselves on the 
aristocrats alone. Almost all the chief promoters of the Rev- 
olution fell a sacrifice, sooner or later to its fury ; and the 
insatiable guillotine had almost a daily tribute from the mem- 
bers of all the different factions, who were struggling with 
each other for the mastery. 

Mary. Well, for my part, I think that those poor French 
who could get to England were very right to stay here. It is 
quite a pleasure to think that our dear nice little island was 
such a comfortable place of refuge for them. 

Mrs. M. When Louis XVIII. came to England, he 
landed at Yarmouth, and was rowed on shore by a boat's 
crew belonging to the Majestic, an EngUsh man-of-war. On 
quitting the boat, the king (who, I should tell you traveled 
under the name of the comte de Lille) left a purse containing 
fifteen guineas to be distributed among the crew. It is said 
that the tars refused the money, and sent it with the followijyj 
letter to their admiral. 



CoKT.l THE REPl^BLIO 54J 

" H.M.S. Majestic, N:i?. 6, 1807. 

" May it please your worship, 

" We holded a talk about that there money that was sent 
us, and, hope no offense, your honor, we don't like to take it, 
because as how we knows fast enuff that it was the true king 
of France that went with your honor in the boat, and that 
he and our own noble king, God bless 'era both, and give 
every one his right, is good friends now. And besides that, 
your honor gived an order long ago, not to take any mone) 
from nobody, and. we never did take none. And Mr. Leneve 
that steered your honor and that there king, says he won'< 
have no hand in it, and so does Andrew Young, the propei 
coxen, and he hopes no offense. — So we all, one and f.11, hegt 
not to take it at all, so no more from your honor's dutiful 
servants." The letter was signed by ten of the crew. 

George. Hurrah I for the jolly tars ! I Iw^e the story h 
true, for the honor of the British navy. 

J^/LtS. iVf. " I can not tell how the truth may be : 
I say the tale as 'twas said to me." 

Before we dismiss from our memories Louis XVI. " ant. 
his times," it will not be uninteresting to take a review ol 
some of the most remarkable changes in maimers which took 
place in France during his reign. In the earliest part of it, 
the whole style of fashionable society was frivolous in the ex 
treme, and nothing was thought of but amusements. Tc 
dress, to act, to sing, to dance, were the sole business of life, 
and to make complimentary speeches, epigrams, and extern 
porary verses, was, if we may credit the picture which mad 
ame de Genlis has dravra. of Parisian society, the highest and 
most desired stretch of intellect among the wits and men of 
fashion of the day. All at once a revolution was wrought in 
these follies, and an entirely opposite system came in. 

Mary. And who was it who set the new fashion ? 

Mrs. 31. Benjamin Franklin, the bookseller of Philadel- 
phia, who, I dare say, would have been the very last person 
to intend it. Wiren FrankHn came to Paris as one of the 
American deputies, the simplicity of his dress turned the 
heads of the ladies, and altered the coats of the gentlemen. 
The gold lace and embroidery, and the powdered curls, which 
had been the pride of the Parisian beaux, were all discarded. 
The fine gentlemen appeared with their hair cut straight, 
and in plain brovra coats, hke this sober republican's. Count 
Segur speaks, in his Memoirs, of the ar-B'val of the deputies. 



542 THE REPUBLIC. [Chap. XXXIX 

and sajs, " It was as if the sages of Rome and Greece had 
suddenly appeared ; tlieir antique simplicity of dress, their 
firm and plain demeanor, their free and direct language, 
formed a contrast to the frivolity, effeminacy, and servile ro 
finements of tht French. The tide of fashion and nobility 
ran after these republicans, and ladies, lords, and men of let- 
ters, all worshiped them." At a splendid entertainment 
given to these Americans, the countess Diana de Polignac, 
one of the beaux esprits of the court, advanced to doctor 
Franklin, and assuming a theatrical attitude, placed a crown 
(a crown of laurel, if I mistake not) on his head. 

Richard. How much the doctor must have been aston 
ished I 

Mrs. M. This adciiration of the Americans led, by a* 
somewhat singular transition, to an admiration of every thing 
that was English ; and at the beginning of the Revolution 
the Anglo-mania was carried to a ridiculous excess. Societies 
were instituted in imitation of the clubs in England, and 
these were mainly instrumental in assisting the projects of the 
revolutionists. Hence, too, another great change in Parisian 
society. The gentlemen deserted the evening parties, and 
little suppers of the ladies, and went instead to the clubs, 
ifec, &c. In the belief also that they were minutely follow- 
ing the English customs, they carried cudgels in their hands, 
wore thick shoes, and did all they could to look like black- 
guard.'. 

Richard. That vi^as not very flattering to the English. 

Mrs. M. As the Revolution proceeded, the Frft.:/- had 
neither time, nor, as it should seem, inclination, to adopt any 
new affectation, or foreign fashion. Society was for a time 
annihilated. The awful precipice on which every one stood 
appeared to have changed the national character, and gave it 
an unnatural gravity. But when the worst tyrannies of the 
Revolution subsided, and Danton, Robespierre, and the guil- 
lotine no longer kept the people in dismay, they seemed to 
awaken as if from a frightful dream, and gave way to the 
most vehement excesses of gayety. The women especially, 
many of whom had exhibited an heroic greatness of mind 
during the late horrible scenes, now indemnified themselves 
for the self-control they had exercised, by plunging into E^n in- 
eonceivable dissipation. 

By the emigration of the nobles, the wealth of the natioii 
was flowing in new channels. Paris was inundated by par- 
venus, rich people of mean birth and sudden elevation. 'by 



CoNT ] THE KKPUI3LIC. 543 

swinHers and all kinds of low adventurers ; and it was not 
till the reign of Bonaparte that society appeared to recover 
materially from the shock which it had sustained during the 
late violent convulsions. Bonaparte, even before he ventured 
to confer titles of his own, did all he could to restore decorum 
and manners in a court which he must have seen to be de- 
graded by the want of it ; and it was observed that from thia 
first dawn of encouragement, elegance of manners and purity 
of speech resumed their natural superiority, and stood in the 
place of titular dignities. 

Mary. Pray, mamma, did the ladies as well as the gen- 
tlemen try to make themselves like the English ? 

Mrs. M. I do not recollect that the ladies ever yielded to 
the English mania sufficiently to adopt our fashions. Never- 
theless, the revolutions in female dress were as extraordinary 
in their way as the other more important revolutions of this 
period. In the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI., hoops 
and paint were still worn. The hair was loaded with poma- 
tum and powder, and drawn up into extraordinary high pyra- 
mids. I have seen caricatures of hair-dressers mounted on 
ladders, dressing the ladies' heads. It was all in vain, how- 
ever, that caricaturists and satirists leveled their ridicule 
against these enormous piles. They continued to rise higher 
and higher, till a violent illness of the queen, which caused 
her to lose her hair, occasioned their downfall. On a sudden, 
and as if with one consent, every lady in France was seen 
with a flat head. The next great change of fashion was 
wrought by the philosopher St. Pierre, who, in his novel of 
Paul et Virginie, has described Virginie as attired in a simple 
robe of white muslin and a plain straw hat. This simple 
picture instantly captivated the ]adies of Paris. The silks, 
satins, and formal dress which had reigned with different 
modifications almost from the time of St. Louis, now all 
vanished, as beneath the stroke of a necromancer, and noth- 
ing was to be seen, from the queen to the waiting-maid, but 
white muslin gowns and straw hats. When the Bevolution 
was commencing, and the rage for liberty introduced an ad- 
miration of the ancient republics, the ladies dressed their 
heads in imitation of antique busts, and endeavored to copy 
the light and scanty draperies of ancient statues. While the 
ladies were thus attired in the Greek fashion, the gentlemen 
kept them in countenance by cropping their hair in the 
Roman fashion. This antique mode, with varialious, lasted 
several ye-^r* An end was at lengtl* put ^ it bv the ap- 



S44 THE REPUBLIC. [CHiP. XXXIX 

pearance on tlie stage of a favorite actress in the charactei 
of a Chinese ^ir], dressed according to the idea she had fomc 
ed of the costume of China, with her petticoats loaded with 
frUls. The novelty of these frills again enchanted the Paris- 
ians, who soon muffled themselves up with frills and ru3s. 
The fashion found its way also into England, though many 
EngUsh ladies were, I dare say, quite unconscious that thej 
were dressing themselves in the French Chinese fashion. 

George. I never used to think the fashions of dress worth 
troubling my head about ; but I now see that it is very amus- 
ing to observe what a weathercock fashion is, and what trifles 
can turn it. 

Mrs. M. Among other changes of fashion, I must not 
forget to notice that which took place in the hour of dining. 
At the beginning of the reign, the fashionable dinner hour in 
Paris was two o'clock ; afterward it was five or six o'clock-- 
a great change from the wholesome practice of the time of 
Francis I., when the rule of life was as follows :— 

To rise at five, and dine at nine, 

To sup at five, and sleep at nine, 

Will make you live till you're ninety-nine,* 



' Lever a cinq, diner a nenf, 
Soapcr a cinq, coacher tk nent, 
Fait rirre d'xao noasnt at seiisf. 



CHAPTER XL. 

NAPOLEON, 
f Years after Christ, 1805— .3 




Napoleon Bonaparte. 



The contest with England, as you were told in ths ksl 
chapter, recommenced in 1803. E-ussia and Austria again 
coalesced with that power. Napoleon, with his character- 
istic impetuosity, burst into Germany in the beginning of 
October, 1805. Wurtemberg, Baden, and Bavaria, joined 
their forces to his, and the duke of Wurtemberg and the 
elector of Bavaria were rewaided by his conferring on them 
the title of king Ulm surrendered on the 17th of October. 
November 13, the French army entered Vienna. On the 
2d of December was fought the great battle of Austerlitz, 
which ended in the complete defeat of the Russians and Aus- 
trians, and enabled the French emperor to dictate a peace 
with Austria. By the terms of this peace, which was dated 
at Presburg, December the 26th, the title of the emperor Na- 
poleon was recognized, together with the titles of the newly 
made kings of Bavaria and AVurtemberg. Venice was ceded 
to Bonaparte as king of Italy. The emperor of Russia with 
drew his troops into h\s own territories. The king of Prussia 



54C NAPOLEON L'^hap. XL 

who liad. remained neutral in this contest, .'received Haiiovei 
as the reward of his neutrality ; or, as is most probable, that 
electorate was conferred on him for the purpose of placingr his 
'nterests in opposition to those of the king of England, who, it 
•wuld not be doubted, woi;ld seize the first opportunity of re- 
claiming his ancient inheritance. 

Thus rapidly was this coahtion dissolved in a short cam- 
paign, which proved universally successful, except on that ele- 
ment where the power of England still reigned without a rival. 

On February the 7 th, a French squadron in the West In- 
dies was defeated by the English admiral Duckworth. Of 
eight sail of the line, three were taken and two burnt. On 
the 21st of October the combined fleets of France and Spain 
were defeated off Cape Trafalgar by lord Nelson. Nineteen 
sail of the line fell into the hands of the victors, most of which, 
however, in consequence of bad v/eather coming on, went oa 
shore, and v^ere destroyed after the action. The English lost 
also in this great battle their gallant Nelson, whose death 
embittered all that natural exultation with which they would 
else have regarded their naval triumph. 

On March 30, 1806, Joseph Bonaparte, one of the brothers 
of Napoleon, was declared king of the Two Sicilies. June 
the 5th Louis Bonaparte was made king of Holland. Dal- 
matia, Istria, Friuli, and other districts, were erected into 
duchies and great fiefs of the French empire, and bestowed 
on the most distinguished generals, and on other persons emi- 
nent for their public services. Fourteen princes also of the 
south and west of Germany united themselves into what was 
called the Confederation of the Rhine, and placed themselves 
under the protection of Napoleon. . Thus finally terminated, 
after having lasted so many ages, the existence of what is 
properly called the Germanic empire. Francis II. renounced 
by proclamation the title of emperor of Germany, and as- 
sumed that of emperor of Austria in its stead. 

This perpetual aggrandizement of the French power and 
mflucnce could not but give great alarm to Prussia and Aus- 
tria. Austria was still una?)le to rise from the bloAV inflicted 
at Austerlitz ; but Prussia, which had been then too much 
alarmed by the rapid progress of the French arms in Germany 
to dare to break lier neutrality, now entered into a league 
with Russia, and took arms. Napoleon instantly set his 
troops in motion. On October 14, 1806, he gained over the 
Prussians a decisive victory at Jena. On the 27th he en- 
tiiiedi Berlin. Hence ho marched soon afterward against th9 



^.D. UU7.} NAPOLEON. 547 

tlnssian armies m Poland. There, too, he was successful, 
after a longer and harder contest, defeating them at Eylau on 
the 8th of February, 1807, and at Friedland on the 14th of 
June. The emperor Alexander then entered into negotia- 
tions, and a peace was concluded at Tilsit, July 7. By the 
terms of this peace the king of Prussia was stripped of almost 
half his dominions. These spoils of Prussia were given to 
Saxony and Westphalia, two new kingdoms now created by 
Napoleon. In the electorate of Saxony the elector was made 
king, and Prussian Poland was added to his dominions. Je 
rome Bonaparte was made king of Westphaha. 

Every po-wer of the continent that had dared to resist the 
arms of France was at this time humbled by repeated defeats. 
England alone remained inaccessible. The invasion of that 
country was a favorite project of Bonaparte, but a project 
Kiuch too dangerous to be attempted without first acquiring a 
great maritime power ; and in the actual state of the French 
empire and its dependencies, which could not muster any 
\diere one formidable fleet, the hope of disputing the com- 
mand of the seas with England seemed so remote as to baffle 
all expectation. To attack the commerce of that proud island 
with the continent appeared to be the only method left of 
weakening its power. With this view Bonaparte now estab- 
lished a system, which has been commonly called the conti- 
nental blockade. Russia and .Denmark took part with him 
in this policy, which required them to break oft" all communi- 
cation with England ; and at length those powers joined 
France openly in the war. This was the moment of Napo- 
leon's greatest ascendency. But from this moment opens also 
a new scene of events, which must necessarily withdraw our 
attention for a short time from the politics of the northern 
powers of Europe. 

Napoleon, in concert with Charles IV., king of Spain, sent 
an army under marcchal Junot to invade Portugal. The 
prince regent of Portugal embarked and sailed for Brazil, and 
the French troops took possession of Lisbon, Nov. 30, 1807. 
In the following year the king of Spain himself was prevailed 
on to resign his crown to. the French emperor, who placed on 
the throne his brother Joseph, king of Naples, and advanced 
Murat, one of his marshals, to the crown of Naples, in Jo- 
seph's room. Both Charles IV. and his son Ferdinand, the 
prince of Asturias, were brought to France. Charles IV. waa 
sent to Compei|rne, and Ferdinand was detained in the castio 
of Valenf ay. 



548 NAPOLEON |Cuap XL 

The Spaniards, indignant at the insult ofiered to theii 
country by thus elevating a foreigrier to tlie throne, roused 
with enthusiasm to repel the intrusion. A provincial junta 
was held at Seville, in May, 1808, in which the prince of 
Asturias, though detained a prisoner in France, was acknowl- 
edged king. In Portugal also arose a similar resistance. An 
EngUsh army, under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley, 
afterward marquis and duke of Wellington, was promptly 
dispatched to assist these struggles in the Peninsula. Junot 
was compelled to evacuate Portugal, and nearly at the same 
time king Joseph quitted Madrid, In November, 1808, how- 
ever, Napoleon himself entered Spain, and soon made himself 
master of the greater part of the country. Madrid submitted 
to him December 4. 

But notwithstanding the success with which the French 
arms seemed to be thixs every where crowned, still the resist- 
ance which they had met with ia Spain, and perhaps still 
more the open injustice of the aggression on so old and faith- 
ful an ally, once more awakened the slumbering spirit of the 
other powers of the continent. The pope had been long dis- 
satisfied. The commercial interests of the whole of Europe 
were alinost ruined by the effect of those decrees which pre- 
cluded, or at least extremely embarras.'sed, the trade with 
England ; and the emperor of Austria was impatient under 
his past losses, and eager to redeem them. In the spring of 
1809 the Tyrol revolted. The Westphalians expelled king 
Jerome from his new dominions, and it was believed that 
Prussia, notwithstanding the smart of her late misfortunes, 
would be glad to take advantage of the first reverses of Napo- 
leon to join her forces to those of the Austrians. But the 
French emperor returnmg instantly from Madrid, crossed the 
Rhine, and penetrated into the heart of Germany. He gained 
successive victories at Eckmuhl and Essling ; he a second 
time took possession of Vienna ; and though worsted in an ob- 
stinate battle at Asperne, he a short time afterward conquered 
at Wagram. He then dictated a peace, called the peace of 
Vienna, which was signed Oct. 14, 1809. 

The continent was now again prostrate at the feet of Na- 
poleon. The Tyrol was given up to devastation ; the pope 
was dethroned ; Bernadotte, a French general, was elected 
Euccessor to the throne of Sweden ; and Louis, king of ILol- 
land, although brother to the French emperor, yet b ing 
thought to allow of a freer intercourse with England than the 
jealousy of Napoleon would tolerate, was dispossessed oi hJ^ 



A.U. 1812.) NAPOLEON. S49 

kingdom, and the Dutch territories were incorporated with 
France. Now also Napoleon allied himself by marriage with 
the most ancient and illustrious house in Europe. He di- 
vorced the empress Josephine, to whom he had been married 
many years, and to whom he is supposed to have been sin- 
cerely attached, and was united to Maria Louisa, archduchess 
of Austria, a daughter of the emperor Francis II. The mar- 
riage ceremony, in which the archduke Charles was Napo- 
leon's proxy, was performed at Vienna, March 11, 1810. In 
the following year the empress had a son,* born March 20, 
10 whom was given the title of the king of Rome. 

Amid these transactions, a new war was preparing, of 
which the alternations were more rapid, and the events on a 
vaster scale, than any which had yet been witnessed in Eu- 
rope. The emperor of Russia, though, during the French 
campaign against Austria, which was concluded in 1809 by 
the battle of Wagram, he maintained the alliance which he 
had contracted at Tilsit, repented of a policy which appeared 
daily to add new strength to the overbearing power of France. 
In the end of 1810, he renewed his intercourse with England ; 
and during that year and the following, both he and Napoleon 
prepared for a contest which was destined to exhibit a most 
remarkable example both of the un calculating folly into which 
an unprincipled ambition betrays the most powerful and 
penetrating miderstandings, and of the signal reverses which 
such an ambition is commonly doomed to experience. 

On March 9, 1812, Napoleon left Paris to commence his 
northern campaign. He staid some time at Dresden, the 
capital of the king of Saxony. Austria and Prussia, and all 
the other states of Germany were his allies, or rather his de- 
pendents. On June 22d, he arrived on the banks of the Nie- 
men. He here issued a proclamation, in which he declared 
war against Russia. He crossed the Niemen on the 23d of 
the same month. June 28th, he took possession of Wilna. 
On the 27th of July he arrived at Witepsk. Smolensk, after 
sustaining a vigorous attack, was abandoned to him on the 
17th of August. On the 7th of September, he engaged in a 
great battle with the Russian army, under marechal Kutusoff, 
near Borodino, a village in the immediate neighborhood of 
Moscow. This battle was indecisive, though on both sides 

* Francis Cliavles Joseph Napoleon, afterward created duke of Reich 
stadt by the emperor of Austria. He is said to have been of an extremely 
cngaeing: and promising character, but died of a consumption in 1834. His 
«ioil jr, on hei husband's fall, was made duchess of Panna. 



.'50 NArOLi:ON. LChaf Xh 

the carnage was dreadful. The Russians remained m possesi* 
BJon of the field of battle : but KutusofF, a few days afterward, 
thought it expedient to retreat, and rather to abandon Mos- 
cow to its fate than to risk the farther weakening of his army 
in another conflict. It was the Russian policy, indeedj to re 
tire before the enemy, and, allowing him to advance as far as 
possible into the:r territories, then to close on him, and cut ofi 
his retreat. Had Napoleon been wise, he would have avoid- 
ed this danger. But it appeared to be his maxim that he 
must always keep advancing. He undoubtedly was conscious 
that his love of war, and his ambition, had not done any 
thing for the real happiness of France, and consequently, that 
he wanted the best foundation on which a sovereign's powei 
may be established. His only substitute was to continue tc 
dazzle the world Avith a perpetual series of vast enterprises, 
and of success. He was also so much intoxicated with past 
triumphs, as to despise all obstacles which might rise in his 
way, and even to make a sort of divinity of his own fortune. 
what is most remarkable of all is, that in this dangerous en- 
terprise he still preserved an almost unlimited influence over 
his whole army. This was not because either the officers or 
the troops were blind to their dangers. It is well known that 
they saw their dangers to be both clear and inevitable, and 
even that they felt themselves led to almost certain destruc- 
tion. But their habits of obedience to their great general, 
their absolute idolatry of him as the military genius of France, 
in whom all their own greatness was, as it were, expressed and 
embodied, together with the kindness of his manner to indi- 
vidual soldiers, gave him an unexampled influence even over 
their murmurs and despair. 

On the 14th of September, the French army entered Mos 
cow. From this moment we may date the history of its de- 
struction. Count Bostopchin, the Russian governor, on quit- 
ting the city, had caused it to be set on fire in several places 
The French troops in their first triumphs of taking possession 
were thrown into consternation by this unexpected event, and 
were at the same time too intent on phmder to exert them- 
selves efiectually to arrest the progress of the flames, which, 
by the morning of the ICth, prevailed in every direction. 
Nothing can be more dreadful than the accounts which we 
possess of the ravage produced by this horrible devastation. 
A large portion of the population had refused to abandon thr 
city, and had concealed themselves in the interior of their 
houses. 'J'hese unhappy people were now forced into ths 



A.D 1812. j NAPOLEOX 5i 

streets by the devouring element. Some took refuge in th* 
public buildings and churches, but even here they were not 
safe from destruction. The hospitals, which vv^ere full oi 
wounded Russian soldiers, became a prey to the flames. 

The sea of fire which thus pervaded this great capital, com 
pelled the French army to quit the city. For four days 
during which it never ceased burning, they encamped at Pe 
trovsky, at the distance of lour versts, or about three miles. 
During their stay at Petrovsky the flames had timJ to ex- 
haust themselves, and heavy rains also fell, which helped to 
extinguish them. On the 21st the army re-entered the city, 
where the Kremlin, its interior circle, which contained the 
palace of the ancient czars, together with that of the patri- 
arch, and many other great buildings, had escaped the flames. 
Napoleon took up his residence in the Kremlin, and it was 
found that houses enough had escaped the flames to afford 
cantonmjents for the whole of the army. 

Thus was Napoleon at length installed, though most in 
auspiciously, in the possession of Moscow. But the Russian 
power was still unbroken ; his communication Vvilh France 
would soon be wholly precluded ; and the vast armies of the 
enemy would again advance on him in the spring. 

All this doubtless he saw distinctly. Yet he hoped that 
the eclat of his conquest would now induce Alexander to seek 
for peace. Failing in this hope, he himself proposed to nego- 
tiate ; but Kutusofi^ to whom the proposal was made, an- 
swered immediately, that no terms could be entered into 
while an enemy remained in the Russian territories. Afte? 
twice renewing the same proposal, with the same ill success- 
Napoleon, though in the face of a Russian winter, determined 
to commence his retreat. 

The body of the French army quitted Moscow on the 18th 
of October, leaving behind a detachment which was instruct- 
ed to blow up the Kremlin. The Kremlin was saved by thb 
rapid advance of the Russians. In the rear of the main 
army followed a long train of carriages, loaded with the spoils 
of Moscow, which were all destined, however, to be abandon- 
ed on the road. 

The first considerable engagement of the retreating army 
with the enemy was on the 24th of the same month at Male 
Jaroslavitz, where ihe French army, though it suffered severe 
ly, appears on the whole to have had the advantage. Eul 
the history of the retreat becomes, from this period, a history 
pf the most dreadful and lentjthened calamities. On the 6ti 



Bi>2 NAPOLEON. [Chap. XL, 

i>f November, Napoleon arrived at Studzianca, a village on 
the banks of the river Beresina ; where the Hussians, vi^ho 
had destroyed the bridge at Borisow, were in force on both 
tides to dispute the passage with him. Here he constructed 
two bridges, one for cavalry, and one for infantry. He him- 
iieli crossed on the 27th. On the morning of the 28th, the 
iiussians opened a cannonade on the wretched fugitives who 
\vere pressing their flight, and the most dreadful carnage took 
place. The strong made their way by throwing the weak 
into the river, or by trampling thera under foot. Many were 
crushed to death by the wheels of the cannon. Some, who 
hoped to save themselves by swimming, were inclosed by the 
floating ice in the midst of the river. Many perished by 
trusting themselves to pieces of ice, which sunk under them, 
and thousands, weary of suffering, and deprived of all hope, 
drowned themselves voluntarilj\ One division, forcing its 
way over the bridge, set fire to it as soon as it had passed, in 
order to prevent the enemy from pursuing. But many of 
their own troops were still on the other side of the river, 
whose misery at this abandonment exceeds all description. 
Crowds on crowds still pressed on the burning bridge, choking 
up the passage, and scorched and frozen at the same instant, 
till it sunk, at length, with a horrid crash, in the Beresina. 

After these disasters, all order was wholly lost. Napoleon 
himself, on the 5th of December, set out on a sledge for Paris, 
where he arrived at midnight on the ISth. The relics of hi.s 
army arrived at Wilna on the 9th, and on the 12th at Kow- 
no, the same place where, six months before, they had crossed 
the Niemen in their invasion of Russia. How different the 
state in which they now re-crossed it I Of 400,000 men, in- 
cluding Prussians and Austrians, w"ho are supposed to have 
engaged in this disastrous expedition, not 50,000, it is sup- 
posed, escaped death or capti^'ity. Of these 50,000 also, I 
apprehend that the larger portion consisted of reinforcements 
which the army met while retreating, and which, consequent- 
ly, had not shared in the previous fatigue and brunt of the 
campaign. It is said also by some good officers, that if the 
Russian generals had exerted themselves during the retreat, 
«dth sufficient alacrity, even this residue could not have es- 
caped. 

In France the greatest possible exertions were made to 
replace the losses which the army had sustained. It was 
impossible wholly tc compensate by new levies the absence 
of the veterans who had perished, or had been made prisoners 



A D. 18I3.J NAPOLEON. 553 

in Russia. But still a very large and powerful ibrj6 was 
marched into Germany early in the spring. New enemies 
Had arisen in the mean time. The ascendency of Russia, and 
the hope that an opportunity was now given of crushing for- 
evfr the insatiable ambition of the French emperor, induced 
Jie king of Prussia to declare once more against hira. The 
Prussians of all ranks flew to arms wHh enthusiasm. Sweden 
also acceded to this new coalition. 

Nevertheless, Napoleon was still alert and intrepid. On 
May 2, 1813, he gained a victory over the Russians and 
Prussians at Lutzen. On the 20th and 21st, he gained an- 
other at Bautzen. The emperor ol Austria then proposed a 
mediation. An armstice was concluded on the 4th of June, 
and a congress assembled at Prague to take into consideration 
terms of peace. The terms proposed were, that the French 
empire shou,ld be bounded by the Alps, the Rhine, and the 
Mouse, and that the German States should be restored to 
their independence. These terms were positively rejected by 
Bonaparte, and the armistice terminated August 10. Imme- 
diately afterward Austria joined the confederates. 

In a great battle near Dresden on the 26th and 27th of the 
same month. Napoleon defeated the allies and compelled them 
lo retreat. But the force of his enemies was daily increas- 
ing. The Bavarians deserted him, and joined their forces to 
those of the Austrians ; and at length, in a series of conflicts 
at Leipsic, in wliich the Saxons also deserted him in the midst 
of a battle, the power of this great conqueror was finally 
broken, and he was compelled to a retreat which was less 
calamitous than that from Moscow only because a less distance 
was to be crossed before he could arrive in a place of safety ; 
and because he had not now to contend with the climate of 
Russia, or with the hardships of a rigorous season. The great 
conflict at Leipsic, which began on the 18th, terminated on 
the morning of the 19th of October. On the 7th of Novem- 
ber, Napoleon crossed the Rhine at Mentz, and two days 
ifterward arrived in Paris. 

Still, even after this second calamity, his power did not 
forsake him. He obtained a levy of 300,000 men from the 
senate, and prepared with the greatest ardor for a campaign, 
in which the tide of war, which since the commencement of 
the Revolution had overflov/ed on the surrounding nations of 
Europe, was now rolled back on France itself. Princa 
Schwartzenberg, commander-in-chief of the Austrians, and 
w'th him the Russian generals Barclay de ToUi and Witt- 

Aa 



a54 NAPOLEON. IChap. XL 

genstein, werj advancing on the frontier of Switzerland at the 
head of an army of 150,000 men. Blucher the Prussian 
general, with 130,000, was 'Advancing from Frankfort ; and 
Bemadotte, with 100,000, by w^ay of the Netherlands. At 
the same time the Austrians had another army in Italy. 
Murat, king of Naples, also joined the confederates. The 
Dutch recalled the stadtholder ; and the English army under 
Lord Wellington, which in the course of the five preceding 
campaigns had succeeded in expelling the French from the 
Spanish peninsula, had crossed the Bidassoa and was advanc- 
ing to Bayonne. 

Opposed by so many and such formidable enemies. Napoleon 
appeared not to lose either his courage or his military genius. 
Lie disconcerted the allies by the rapidity of his movements, 
and gained several brilliant successes ; which, though they did 
not carry with them any lasting advantage, yet filled Europe 
wdth wonder at his fertility of resources, began to restore that 
dominion over men's minds which he had long exercised st 
extensively, and made his enemies still doubtful of the result. 
A congress for the negotiation of a general peace was assem- 
bled at Chatillon, in January, 1814. The terms proposed by 
the allies were, to leave Napoleon in possession of the same 
territories which France had held under her kings, together 
with the accession of the Austrian Netherlands. This con- 
gress, however, was ineffectual, and at length dissolved itself. 
The allies advanced, and on the 30 th of March a battle was 
fought on the heights near Montmartre, which put it in their 
power to make an immediate assault on the capital. The 
city capitulated the following day. 

The old royalist party now conceived the hope that the 
Bourbon family might be restored to the throne ; and many 
friends of liberty also, who had found that the finger of Na- 
poleon had pressed more heavily than the whole weight of the 
ancient government, were disposed to concur in favoring their 
restoration, as being the surest means of producing a steady 
tranquillity. Cries of "Long live the king I down with the 
tyrant ! long live the Bourbons !" were frequently heard in the 
streets ; and the emperor Alexander, and the king of Prussia, 
who entered Paris in procession, March 31, were greeted with 
the plaudits and acclamations of the multitude. On the 1st 
of April the senate decreed that "Napoleon Bonaparte haj 
forfeited the throne ; that the hereditary right in his family 
was abolished ; and the people and the army released from 
t-heir oath of finality." 



AD. 1814.] NA.POLEDN. adS 

Napoleon, who had still an army at Fontainblcau, on re- 
ceiving this intelligence, announced a determinatiou to march 
to Paris, and to make an attempt to repel the intruders ; but 
the struggle was become plainly hopeless. His marechala 
refused to support him, and in this desperate situation of hia 
affairs pressed him to abdicate. He stipulated at first that 
his son should succeed him ; but the cause of the Bourbons 
becoming every day more and more decided, he was compelled 
finally to abdicate unconditionally. The treaty with the allied 
powers containing this abdication was dated on the 11th of 
April, and provided that the little island of Elba, in the 
Mediterranean, should be assigned to him, in full sovereignty 
as his future residence. A pension of two millions of franc* 
was allotted to him. Pensions were assigned also to the other 
members of his family. On the 20th he set out for his new 
principality, for which he embarked on the 28th in an English 
frigate at Frejus, the same port at which he had landed fif- 
teen years before, on his return from the expedition to Egypt. 
The empress returned to Austria vidth her son, and put herself 
under the protection of her father, with whom they remained 
for some time. 

In the mean time the senate declared a constitutional 
charter, by which they recalled Louis XVIII. to the throne, 
on the condition that he should swear to accept the charter 
and to enforce it. To this Louis gave a general assent in a 
declEPtation dated May 2. On the 3d he made his solemn 
entry into Paris. On the 30th a definitive treaty of peace 
was concluded ; by which the continental dominions of Franco 
were restricted, generally speaking, to those which it possessed 
on the 1st of January, 1792, but with some few additions of 
territory, partly in the Netherlands, and partly in Savoy. 
England restored all her foreign conquests from France, with 
the exception of the islands of Tobago and St. Lucie, in the 
West Indies, and of the Isle of France and its dependencies. 
All means were taken, which prudence could dictate to the 
allied powers, to spare the feelings of the great nation which 
they had conquered ; and even in the act of resimiing the 
foreign territories which it had acquired, to leave it in posses- 
sion of the consolatory and just belief that the honor of the 
nation was still preserved in all its integrity, and that no dis- 
grace fell any where but on that ambitious individual, whose 
own imprudence had provoked his signal fall. On June 4th, 
the king presented to the legislature a constitutional charter, 
which wa.s formed on the basij of that former charter wliich 



658 NAPOLEON. [Chap. XL 

had beeu Jravtii up by tlie senate in tne beginning of April. 
Still, however, there were very many persons who apprehend- 
ed that the king, or at least his advisers, were disposed to hold 
that the oppressive privileges of the old monarchy had been 
transmitted to him untouched through the Revolution ; and 
that he would only wait for an opportunity to break the faith 
he had pledged, to re-establish all the abuses of the ancient 
prerogative, and especially to resume the property of the 
church, which had been taken possession of by the national 
assembly, and was now divided among a large body of pro- 
prietors. The personal character of Louis himself gave little 
encouragement to the suspicions ; but still they acquired, from 
various causes, great currency, and awakened a very general 
distrust. 

With these feelings the year 1814 passed away. In the 
year following, those rapid changes of fortune, with which the 
period already -before us abounds so greatly, were at last wound 
up by bringing once more on the scene, under circumstances 
still more surprising than we have yet observed, the extraor- 
dinary individual to whom, if France can produce a parallel, 
we must go back for it to the history and achievements of 
Charlemagne. 

Napoleon on his passage from Frejus to Elba, is said to have 
observed, that " if Marius had slain himself in the marshes 
of Mintunice, he would never have enjoyed his seventh con- 
sulate." What was thus at first, perhaps, only a vague' aspi- 
ration, soon became an object of thought and ambition. The 
peace had restored to France the captive soldiery who had 
been prisoners in England, Russia, and Genmany. Even 
those officers who had sworn fidelity to Louis were ready to 
aid in reviving the claims of the great general, to whom the 
army was thought to owe its glory and greatness. Thej' 
were sensible that they could never retain under another gov- 
ernment that consideration which they had possessed under 
his. Many of them found also, or if they did not find, yet 
fancied, that they were actually shghted in the Bourbon court. 
All means also were taken to foment popular dissatisfaction, 
and to excite some undefined expectation of the future return 
of Napoleon. 

In the beginning of the year 1815, he returned in reality. 
Escaping from Elba, he disembarked on the 1st of March, 
w^.th about 900 men, near the small town of Games, in tha 
gu/f of Juan ; thence he advanced to Gap. On the 5th, in 
bis way to Grenoble, he was joined by many of the officers, 



A;D. 181 5. J JIAPOLEON bVl 

and all the soldiery stationed there. From Grenoble he ad- 
vanced to Lyons, ^A here monsieur the king's brother, and tha 
doke of Orleans, had hastened to oppose his farther progress. 
Here also the troops joined him. On the 17th he reached 
Auxerre ; he then proceeded to Fontainbleau, and on the 
evening of the 20th entered Paris without opposition. Louis 
had left his capital at one in the morning of that day, and 
after vainly attempting to secure himself at Lille, fled first to 
Ostend, and afterv/ard to Ghent. The whole of the army, 
with the exception of a few of the officers, and almost tha 
whole of the civil authorities, readily acknowledged the cause 
of Napoleon, thus once more seated on his abdicated throne 
by the most rapid transition known in history. 

One of the first acts of the restored emperor of France 
was to attempt to induce the allied powers to acquiesce in 
his restoration, as being, he said, the unanimous act of the 
French people, and to abide in all other respects by the treaty 
of Paris of the preceding year. But all those powers agreed 
unanimously that they would have neither peace nor trucft 
with him. It was become evident, therefore, that there must 
be another appeal to the sword. Both parties made the most 
gigantic preparations. Napoleoir endeavored to gain popu- 
larity by proposing institutions of a nature favorable to lib- 
erty, and similar to those of Louis's constitutional charter. 
But he clearly saw that his real strength lay in his army ; 
and it was plain, that if victory should restore his authority, 
all the national and civil institutions would again bend before 
his will. 

In the beguining of June a combined English and Prussian 
army was quartered in the neighborhood of Brutcels and 
Charleroi, under the command of the duke of WeUington 
and marechal Blucher. Napoleon, with his characteristic 
decision and promptitude, put himself at the head of 150,000 
selected troops, who had assumed the title cf the army of the 
north, and on the 14th of June commenced operations on the 
Flemish frontier. On the 15th he passed the Sambre, and 
took Charleroi. On the 16th two battles were fought at 
Ligny and at Quatre Bras. In the one of these Napoleon 
'gained the advantage over Blucher ; in the other marechal 
Ney had a severe struggle with the English, in which neithei 
party gained a clear superiority. In this action at Quatr< 
Bras the duke of Brunswick was killed — the son of that duk* 
who had commanded the Prussian army in the war whicl 
broke out in the beginning of the K evolution. Both the* 



»8 NAPOLEON. [Chjp. XL 

actions, however, are chiefly memorablfc as the precursors oi , 
the decisive battle which followed on the 18th, at Waterloo, 
and which terminated forever Napoleon's splendid career. It 
had long been his wish to be personally opposed to the duke 
of Wellington, and, when he joined the army of the north, 
he exultingly exclaimea, " Now I shall encounter Welling- 
ton !" His wish was gratified, but never, perhaps, was any 
defeat more bloody or more disastrous than that which he was 
destined now to sustain. He issued his order?, and viewed 
the battle, from a convenient distance ; and an oflScer who 
was standing near him affirmed, that " his astonishment at 
the resistance of the British was extreme ; his agitation be- 
came violent ; he took snuff by handfuls at the repulse of 
each charge." At last he took the officer by the arm, saying, 
" The afiair is over — we have lost the day — let us be off I" 
In this heartless manner, and thinking only of himself, Napo- 
leon abandoned an army which was wholly devoted to him. 
lie fled to Paris, where he arrived on the 20th. 

He again abdicated, making at the same time another in- 
effectual attempt to place the succession in the hands of his 
son. On the 29th, he set out for Rochefort, intending to 
seek refuge in the United States of America. In the mean 
time, the allied army advanced on Paris. On the 7th of 
July the city surrendered, and on the Sth Louis XVIII, re- 
entered it. 

Thus closed finally that succession of revolutions which 
had distracted Europe for a period of twenty-five years. 
Peace was again restored nearly on the basis of the treaty 
which had been contracted the year before, but with some 
resumptions of territory by the allies on the frontiers of the 
Netherlands, of Germany, and of Savoy. It was also pro- 
vided, *.hat an allied army of 150,000 men should occupy, 
for the space of three or five years, a line of fortresses from 
Cambray to Alsace, the possession of which would enable 
them, in any case of necessity, to march straight to Paris 
without opposition. This army was to be maintained wholly 
at the expanse of France, and France agreed also to pay 
700,000,000 of francs, to be divided in different proportions 
among the. allied powers, as a partial indemnification for the 
expenses of this last contest, which had been brought on so 
imexpectedly by the return of Napoleon. It was also de- 
cided that the pictures and statues, of which Italy, the Neth- 
erlands, and other countries, had been despoiled, should, be 
restored, to their ancient possessors. Not even the occupatioM 



4..D 1815.J NAPOLEON. Sir* 

of their territory by foreign troops, and the sort of tiibvLte 
whicl: they were compelled to pay for their maintenance, ap- 
pear to have been so grating to the national vanity as the 
fceing compelled to make this just restitution. The definitive 
t]-eaty was signed at Paris, on the 20th day of November. 

It now only remains lor me to add a few brief particulars 
with regard to '■he condition in which the other nations of 
Europe were h ft at the conclusion of these protracted ho& 
tilities. 

In December, 1813, after the defeats which Napoleon had 
sustained in Germany, he judged it politic to restore Ferdi- 
nand to the throne of Spain ; first making a treaty by which 
he may be said to have bound him hand and foot to support 
in every thing the interests of France. 

In Italy, Murat, the new king of Naples, who had married 
one of Napoleon's sisters, joined, in 1814, as you have al- 
ready been told, the cause of the allies. In 1815, either from 
distrust of their sincerity, or from the natural restlessness of 
his disposition, he took arms against Austria, and occupied 
Rome. He then advanced as far as the Po, but was soon 
sompelled to retreat. In a battle at Tolentino, on the 2d 
and 3d of May, he was completely defeated. He fled alone 
to Naples, and thence to France, and from France to Corsica. 
The exiled Ferdinand of Naples, in the mean time, returned 
from Palermo, and again seated himself on his throne. Mu- 
rat, in the October following, rashly attempted to invade 
Calabria, but was defeated and taken prisoner, and imme- 
diately afterward was tried and executed by a court-martial. 
In the north of Italy the king of Sardinia was restored, 
and Genoa was added to his dominions. Austria retained 
V^enice, and resumed the Milanese, and the other territories 
of which she had been in possession before the wars of the 
Revolution. 

The whole of Flanders was, with the full consent of Aus- 
tria, united to Holland, and the prince of Orange assumed 
the title of king of the Netherlands. 

Napoleon, now a hopeless fugitive, arrived at Rochefort* or 
the 3d of July. He there embarked on board a small frigate 
for America ; but an English ship of superior force lying in 
sight, it was impossible, if he sailed, to escape being taken 
Under these circumstances, he surrendered himself, on the 
15th of July, to the English. The English captain received 
him and his suite on board, and immediately sailing for Erv 

" On the westerr loast of France. 



■560 NAPOLEON. LChap. XI 

gland, arrived in Torbay, on the 25th. After various discos- 
sions as to the manner in which he should be treated, it waff 
finally determined that he should be sent to ti>3 island of St 
Helena, a place which combined, in a remarkable degree, the 
provision for the safe custody of his person, with the least 
restraint possible of his domestic comforts and his habits of 
exercise. This consideration was fairly regarded as due to a 
man who had filled so high a station in the world, and wliose 
return from Elba, however perfidious and indefensible, had 
been sanctioned by the applause and approbation of the tjow- 
erful kingdom from which he was again expelled. The ex- 
pedition conducting him arrived at St. Helena on the 18th of 
October, 1815. A place called Longwood was fitted up for 
his reception. He there resided nearly six years, and died on 
the 5th of May, 1821.* 

The death of this extraordinary man of course annihilated 
the hopes of his remaining partisans in France, who till then 
had, in spite of all existing improbabilities, cherished the idea 
that, by some of his inconceivable turns of fortune, he would 
at some time or other re-appear among them. For the last 
few years, the French nation in general has, to all outward 
appearance at least, quietly accommodated itself to the do- 
minion of the Bourbons. The people seem for the present to 
have exhausted all their more turbulent propensities, and to 
be willing to exchange glory for tranquillity. 

Louis XVIII. having fulfilled the hopes which were en- 
tertained of his purity of character and goodness of heart, and 
surpassed the not very sanguine anticipations of his capacity 
and powers for government, descended peaceably to the grave, 
on the 16th of September, 1824. 

He married Maria Josepha of Savoy, who died at Hart" 
well, in 1810. 

On the death of Louis Xyill., his brother Charles, who 
had been the comte d'Artois, mounted the throne. He mar- 
ried Maria Theresa, of Savoy, sister to the wife of Louis 
XVIII. She died in 1805, and left two sons. Of these the 
eldest, Louis Antoine, due d'Angouleme, on his father's ac- 
cession, of course became dauphin. He married his cousin, 
the daughter of Louis XVI. 

* Napoleon was buried in Longwood; but in 1840, with tbe consent of 
the English govenitnent, a small French squadron was sent, under tha 
command of the priace de JoinviUe, to bring his remains to France. They 
were received with the greatest veneration both at Havre, where they 
were first landed, and afterward at Paris, where they were re-irlerred in 
the church of the Invalids on the 18th of DecemVer i7i that year 



CoNV.J NAPOLEON. St,i 

The younger son, Charles i^'erdinand, due de Ben , mar- 
ried Maria Caroiine of Naples. He was kiUed Feb. Ic , 1820, 
as he was leaving the theater, by an assassin of the nime of 
Louvel. This man was a political enthusiast, who declared 
on his trial that he had taken away the life of the duke in 
intention of destroying the race of the Bourbons, who were 
the cause, as he thought, of the misery of the nation. 

The due de Berri had a daughter born Feb. 21, 1&19, and 
& posthumous son, Henry Charles Ferdinand, due de Bor 
deaux, born Sept. 29, 1S20. After the dauphin, who had 
ao children, this young prince became presumptive heir to 1 hb 
crown of France. 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XL. 




Fontaine dk Palmier. 

Richard. And now, if you please, mamma, will you tell 
ns something wiore about Bonaparte ? 

Mary. I should have thought you had heard enough 
about him in the last chapter ! 

Richard. Yes ! But I want to know how he began the 
world, and by what means he came to be so great. 

Mrs.. Markham. The father of Napoleon Bonaparte, ol 
Buonaparte, as it was originally, and indeed more properh 



*63 NAPOLEON [Chap it 

epelled, was a lawyer at Ajaccio, in Corsica. Count Martoeuf 
the French governor of Corsica, took great notice of the 
young Napoleon, and procured admittance for him into tba 
royal military college at Brienne, in Champagne. While 
there, his whole soul was absorbed in military ardor. Not 
only his studies, but also his amusements, all took the same 
direction. He scorned the common diversions of boyhood, and 
Boleiy occupied himself in inventing mancEuvres, in forming 
plans of fortifications, and in other meditations and studies of 
the art mihtary. His little garden (for it seems that each of 
the rstudents had one of his own) he turned into an encamp- 
ment, surrounded it with a palisade, and was violently irritat- 
ed if any of his companions presumed to invade it. 

George. It would have been as well for the world if 
master Bonaparte had grown up with as great a dislike to 
invading, as he had to be invaded 

Mrs. M. Bonaparte, while at Brienne, was noted for his 
proficiency in his studies, and also for his pride and suUenness 
But notwithstanding these defects of character, he was «ven 
tnen remarkable for that power, which he showed so much 
aiterward, of gaining ascendency over others. His schoolfel- 
lows, though they dishked him, he yet constrained to follow 
nim in all his schemes, and to enter into his mimic wars 
Many were the battles between imaginary Greeks and Per 
sians, E-omans and Carthaginians, in which Napoleon, as you 
may be sure, was always the victorious party. 

George. Nothing should have made me one of his legion 
of honor, after he was emperor ; but I should- have liked very 
well to have been one of his Greeks or Romans while he was 
a schoolboy. 

Mrs. M. In 1784, when Napoleon was about fifteen, he 
was admitted into the royal military school at Pans , and in 
ihe following year he obtained a lieutenancy in a regiment of 
artillery. About this time he lost his patron, count Marboeuf, 
who had hitherto supplied him with money, and his finances 
became, in consequence, much reduced. But notwithstand- 
ing this embarrassment, the time we are now speaking of 
was, probably, the happiest period of his life. He would 
often say, when in the plenitude of his power, that he "loved 
to look back on those happy days, when he was roaming 
about the streets of Paris as an engineer subaltern, to dis 
cover a cheap place to dine at." 

Richard. I think I know why he was then so happy. 

G 'orgs. And so do I It was because his heart was a* 



«ONV.J i"5Al'OLE0N db4 

Sight as his parse, and not weighed d(>wn with a load of guilt 
and ambition. 

ik/rs. M. This happy period was soon over. In the out- 
set of the Revohition, the young Napoleon entered so heartily 
into its principles as to excite the indignation of his brother 
officers, who, on one occasion, were so much exasperated by 
his conduct, that, with a violence as unpardonable as his own, 
they were actually on the point of drowning him. He then 
secluded himself, to brood in solitude over his wrongs. After 
a while he returned into Corsica, and resided a short time 
with his mother, who was at that time a widow in indigent 
circumstances. Here he still industriously pursued his pro- 
fessional studies, and he amused himself in his intervals of 
leisure in writing a history of Corsica. 

George. I should never have thought that the writing a 
history could be a leisure amu&ement. From what I have 
seen of it, it seems very hard work. 

iVJrs. M. His love for his native country prebably light- 
ened the labor to him. He was often heard to say, that "he 
recollected with delight the very smell of the earth in Cor- 
sica." He did not, however, at this time, give himself any 
long enjoyment of it. We find him again at Paris in 1790 : 
and in the following year he was promoted to be a captain of 
artillery, in the regiment of Grenoble. He first exhibited 
his transcendent military talents at the siege of Toulon, in 
December, 1794. On that memorable occasion, he displayed 
a coolness, bravery, and decision of character which astonished 
nis superior officers. He was one of those who, after the city 
was taken, was appointed to execute the sanguinary ven- 
geance with which, as Fouche says, in the letter I read to 
vou yesterday, the victory was celebrated. From Toulon, 
Bonaparte repaired to Nice, and he was there at the time of 
Robespierre's death, and the termination of the reign of ter- 
ror. He was arrested on the charge of having been a part}' 
in the massacres at Toulon, but was soon released. He waS; 
nevertheless, deprived of his command in the artillery. In 
disgust at this treatment, he hastened to Paris to make his 
complaint, biit could obtain no redress. His fortunes were 
now at their lowest ebb : he was destitute of money and 
iriends, and spent many months in revolving various wild 
md impracticable plans. I have heard it said, that he pro- 
tected to enter the English service, and that he secretly visit- 
•.^ London, where h3 lodged in the Adelphi. 

'f he disturbances in Paris at length produced an opening 



56* NAPOLEON. LChap Xi. 

for liis ambition. He vigorously exerted himseli in the service 
of the convention, and gained over the opposing factions a 
great victory, in which 8000 Parisians are said to have fallen. 
This success was rewarded by the command of the army of 
the interior. In the beginning of 1796 he married Josephine, 
the widow of count Beauharnois, and was soon afterward 
placed at the head of the army of Italy. 
. Ricliard. One of the most surprising things about Bona- 
parte is, that he should so easUy have prevailed on those de- 
termined republicans to submit to him. 

Mrs. M. By the confession of our old acquaintance, M. 
Fouche, " the repubhcans had governed at random, without 
end, and without fixed principles." They were all jealous of 
one another, and the want of a head was much felt. At this 
moment the young Corsican appeared, and had the vigor and 
abihty promptly to seize the opportunity. 

Mary. Pray what became of Josephine after sha was 
divorced ? • 

Mrs. M. She continued to reside at Malmaison, near 
Paris, and submitted to her degradation with a serenity and 
dignity which greatly exalted her in the eyes of the world. 
When the allies entered Paris, the emperor Alexander paid 
her a visit, and behaved to her with a marked respect, saying, 
that he was anxious to see a lady whose praises he had heard 
repeated in every part of France in which he had been. Jo- 
sephine died soon after this interview, of a violent cold. 

Richard. I can not imagine any thing more mortifying 
to the French than to see their dear Paris, of which they are 
so proud, taken possession of by a foreign enemy. 

Gem-ge. It served them very right : for my part, I don't 
pity them in the least. The French had themselves taken 
possession of so many capital cities, that it was but fair they 
should have their own taken in turn. 

Mary. But then think, brothers, of the poor innocent 
Parisians I 

Mrs. M. The Parisians, as was the case during the wars 
of the league, shut their eyes to their impending danger. Even 
when the cannon of the allied army were within hearing, the 
mass of the people felt little alarm, so totally ignorant were 
they of the number of the enemy, and so entirely confident in 
the "fortune" of their emperor, who, they doubted not, would 
Boon surround the invaders, and take them all prisoners. As 
Bome excuse for this bluid folly, it ought to be added, that 
every thing was done on the part of the government to en' 



Cofjr.] NAPOLEON. 565 

courage the delusion of the people. Tee number of the ene 
my was represented as being only thirty or forty thousand, 
and the newspapers, which were all under the direction of 
the government, propagated the most barefaced falsehoods. 
Defeats were passed over, and every trifling advantage was 
magnified into a great victory. To favor this deceit, every 
prisoner of war that could be mustered was paraded with 
great ceremony through Paris. Not only those who had been 
taken in recent actions were thus exhibited, but also many 
of those who had been taken on former occasions were brought 
from their places of confinement for the purpose of swelling 
the apparent triumph, 

Ridiarcl. It is impossible that every body could have been 
so deceived. There 77ius.t have been some who knew the real 
state of affairs. 

Mrs. M. All who were immediately connected with Bona 
parte were doubtless very well informed on the subject. The 
empress retired to Blois on the first approach of the allies, 
taking with her fifteen wagon-loads of treasure. I lately met 
with a curious account by an English gentleman of what he 
saw in Paris at this interesting period. " At daybreak of the 
morning," he says, " on which the empress left Paris, the dis- 
order which had reigned all night in the Tuileries was ex- 
posed to the public. The window-shutters being opened, the 
wax-lights in the chandeliers were seen expiring in their sock- 
ets. The ladies were seen running from room to room, some 
weeping in the greatest distraction, and servants hurrying 
from place to place in like confusion." 

George. I should like to know what the newspapers said 
about the allies when they were actually in Paris. 

Mrs. M. In the Mcyiiitev,r, which was published on the 
day of capitulation, little or no notice was taken of the state 
of public affairs. The columns of the paper were nearly filled 
'Adth a critique on some dramatic works, and a dissertation on 
the probable existence of Troy. 

Kichard. But surely all attempt at deceit must then have 
been useless ; for every body that had eyes must have seen 
what was going on. 

Mrs. M. Paris, during its occupation by the allied troops, 
presented a strange spectacle. Soldiers of many mingled 
nations, Hussians, Austrians, and semi-barbarians from the 
deserts of Tartary, all quartered, as it were, in one greai 
camp. In the wide streets, many of the soldiers had con- 
fctructed huts, at the doors of which some of them might be 



.)66 LOUIS XVIII. lChap. XLi 

6ei3n cooki.ig their food, others botching their grotesque gar 
ments, and others looking over the booty which they had 
gained in their march through the country, or bartering it 
with the inhabitants, who were eagerly chafi'eiing for prop- 
erty which they knew to have been the plunder of their fel 
low countrymen. In some places horses were tied to the 
trees, and were busily employing themselves in eating the 
bark. Around were piles of warlike accouterments, and arms 
of overy description, from the bows and arrows and long 
lances of the Tartars, to the pistols and sabers of the Europe- 
ans. But the most surprising part of this extraordinary scene 
was the extreme orderliness and peaceable demeanor (with 
/ery few exceptions), of the foreign soldiers, and the compos 
ure and apparent apathy of the French under circumstances 
io truly humiliating. 



CHAPTER XLI. 

LOUIS XVIIL 
[Years after Christ, 1815—1824.] 

After the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, Louis, ai 
you were told, re-entered his capital July 8th, 1815. He, at 
first, appointed the prince de Tallyrand to the ministry of 
foreign afiliirs, and continued Fouche in his post of minister 
of police. But these appointments were soon canceled, and 
a new ministry formed, which had the due de Richelieu at 
its head. Toward the close of the year, a law of amnesty 
was proposed and carried, by which, with some few reserva- 
tions, a fuU pardon was granted to all who had taken the 
part of Napoleon in the recent struggle. Among the persons 
excepted were Ney, Labedoyere, and Lavallette, who were 
apprehended and tried. The treason of the two first was evi- 
dent. They had sworn allegiance to, and had taken employ- 
ment under, Louis, after the restoration in 1814, and never- 
theless had been among the first of those who deserted his 
service for that of the usurper. Yet an intense feeling in 
♦heir behalf prevailed throughout France. 

At the time of Napoleon's arrival before Grenoble, in hia 
extraordinary career of March, 1815, Labedoyere had the 
command in that town. He immediately marched out at tho 
head of his corps, with drums beating, and the old eagle of. 



A..D. 1815.] LOUIS XVIII. SBT 

the regiment displayed, to salute and join, the emperor. This 
was the first great impulse which the army received, and it 
may have weighed much to decide the success of the enter- 
prise. He was now condemned, and shot. 

Ncy, duke of Elchingen, who had acquired xhe title ol 
" bravest of the brave," had been one of the most distinguished 
of aU the generals of Napoleon ; and the national enthusiasm 
for military gloiy had fixed on him as its favorite hero. He 
is said to have j:romised Louis to bring Napoleon to Paris, 
shut up like a wild T^east in an iron cage. Yet he no sooner 
received an invitation to espouse the cause of his former mas- 
ter, than he denounced the Bourbons as unfit to reign, and 
recommended his troops to join the emperor. He had after- 
ward fought at Waterloo, and led the final but unsuccessful 
attack on tho British center. The court-martial, which was 
now collected to try him, strangely declared itself incompetent 
to the office. He was then brought before, and condemned 
to death by, the Chamber of Peers ; and the sentence was 
carried into execution, but in a clandestine manner, which 
showed, or was thought to show, an extreme timidity in the 
government. 

The case of Lavallette was altogether romantic. He had 
been one of Napoleon's earliest and most intimate personal 
friends, and had married a niece of the empress Josephine. 
He had taken no office under Louis, but on the approach of 
Napoleon had assumed the mastership of the post-office, the 
station which he had held before the restoration ; and he had 
zealously circulated • the intelligence of the emperor's rapid 
success, and had suppressed a proclamation which was issued 
by Louis, previously to his departure from the capital. For 
this ofiense he was condemned to death ; but his execution 
was delayed, and during the intei-val, his wife contrived and 
effected his escape. 

Every restored monarch must be surrounded by difficulties, 
and probably no one was ever more entangled in them than 
Louis XVIII. The humiliation of the French arms, to which 
he owed his restoration, was, of itself, enough to excite a 
Btrong feeling against him. He was infirm, and of an un- 
wieldy person, and the Parisians, and the people in general, 
were very ready to contrast these disadvantages with the 
energetic activity of Napoleon. Pie had expressed a natural 
gratitude to the prince regent of England, for the friendjy in- 
terference by which he had been placed on his throne. Bui 
this unavoidable, and, indeed, praiseworthy gratitude to En 



A6B lUUiS XVIII LChap-XLI 

gland, had necessarily operated to produce dissatisfaction ia 
France. The general object of his policy was to steer be 
tween the extremes of all parties, as well as he could. His 
chief difficulties, at least at first, were with the royalists, al- 
though he had certainly gone great lengths to satisfy them, 
even to the extent of violating in several instances the coii- 
ititutional charter, which the senate had proposed to him in 
1814, as the condition under which they called him to the 
throne. He had, moreover, proscribed the tri-color, and had 
restored the spotted and M'hite flag of the Bourbons. This 
last, trifling as it may seem, was probably one among the 
most serious of his errors. Almost all to whom French glory 
was dear — that is, almost all Frenchmen — felt iahgnant at 
the proscription of the flag which had triumphed a- Marengo, 
Jena, and Austerlitz, and in so many other great battles of 
Napoleon. 

Still, however, the royalists, who had the duk^ .md duch- 
ess of Angouleme at their head, were not satist-^d. Tlieii 
party was in great strength in the chamber of d ^puties, and 
the king, therefore, in 1816, by his ministers' ,tdvice, dis- 
solved the chamber. The elections which follow A gave the 
predominance in the new chamber to the liberaU^ as the op- 
posite party was commonly called ; and the d^j de Riche- 
lieu, finding himself as unable to repress this parly as he had 
been to modify that of the royahsts, resigned las office in 
1818. He was succeeded by the marquis Dessoles, and then 
by M. Decazes. Decazes, in his turn, resigned in 1820, and 
the due de RicheUeu resumed his place in the ministry. M 
Decazes had estabhshed the freedom of the press. Riche- 
lieu restrained it, by bringing forward and carrying a law 
which required that all pohtical writings should be subjected 
to a censorship before they were pubhshed. He carried, also, 
a law of arrest, and various alterations in the law of elec- 
tions, which greatly increased the power of the government. 

These measures checked for a time the influence of the 
liberal, or popular party, or of what was called the left ot 
the chamber of deputies. The ?ight, of course, consisted of 
the royalists, or of those who were inclined to press, as far aa 
possible, a return to the principles of the ancient regime. 
Eafih of these sides warred on the party of the center, or the 
moderate party, which was the king's own. 

From these dissensions in the chamber of deputies, it is 
satisfactory to turn to a view of the relations of France with 
the neighboring countries. Jt had been provided by the 



A.D. 1822. J LOUIS XVIIl. . 569 

treaties of alliance of 1814 and 1815 between Russia, Aus- 
tria, Prussia, and England, that special congresses, or, as they 
were called, re-unimis, should be held from time to time by 
the sovereigns of these states, or their minislers, to take into 
consideration the state of Europe, and the measures necessary 
for its repose and prosperity. The first of these re-unions was 
held in October, 1818, at Aix-la-Chapelle. Among the chief 
points then brought before the congress, was that of with- 
drawing the foreign troops cantoned in France, concerning 
whom it had been provided that they either should remain 
for a period of five years, or might be withdrawn at the end 
of three years, as circumstances should direct. Their im- 
mediate removal was now agreed to unanimously. France 
acceded to the terms of the alliance already existing between 
the other four great powers of Europe. No delay was made 
in the actual removal of the troops ; and in a very short 
period not a foreign soldier was to be found in arms in any 
part of the French territory. 

At the close of the year 1820, the due de Richelieu, in thc» 
hope of conciliating some of the aristocrats, admitted a few 
of the more moderate of that party into the cabinet. Of 
these M. Villele was the most conspicuous. These new allies, 
however, soon felt dissatisfied, and gave in their resignations 
in the end of July, 1821. Richelieu then retired, and a new 
administration, having M. Villele at its head, was announced 
on the 14th of December following. 

Another congress of sovereigns assembled at Verona in the 
beginning of 1822. The viscount Montmorency attended 
this congress on the part of France, and the affairs of Spain 
were the chief topic of its discussions. Louis, who was well 
aware that many political discontents were fomenting secretly 
within his own realm, regarded on that account with the 
greater apprehension the distracted condition of Spain ; and 
his minister strongly urged the congress to resort to force to 
restore its tranquillity. The opposition which was made on 
the part of England hindered the congress from doing this 
openly ; but it must be suspected that Montmorency foresaw 
that no obstacle would be presented to the interference of 
France, provided she kept clear of all aggrandizement of her 
owii power by any conquests which she might make. The 
French ministry attempted for a time to conceal their inten- 
tions ; but at length the mask was thrown oft^ and in the be- 
ginning of 1823 a considerable army was marched into Spain, 
under the command of the duke of Angouleme. Endanfi 



70 LOUIS XVIII. LChap XIJ 

was ihe oily neutral power -which took any offense at thi? 
proceeding ; but though it became the subject of much ani- 
madversion in parhament, it was not generally deemed to 
amount to a sufficient cause for hostility. 

The French army crossed the Bidassoa, April 7, and enter- 
ed Madrid on the 10th of May. From Madrid they advanced 
to and took Cadiz. On the 2d of November the duke oi 
Angoul^me re-entered Paris in a triumphal procession ; but 
the greater part of the army remained be^nd in military oc- 
cupation of Spain, and the last division did not return to 
France till 1828. 

The impression which was made in France by these suc- 
cesses was very gratifying to the court. The national pride 
was indulged by the air of conquest which the army had as- 
sumed. To dictate to Spain was to take once more an atti- 
tude of command in Europe ; and the duke of Angouleme 
was metamorphosed into a hero, and loaded with eulogies 
which would have been extravagant even if they had been 
applied to Napoleon. 

The ministers, encouraged by the popularity thus obtained^ 
ventured to project new changes in the election of the mem- 
bers of the chamber of deputies ; and also an extension, from 
tive years to seven, of the period for which they were to serve, 
as in the instance of the septennial law of England. These 
measures, which were evidently calculated to strengthen the 
influence of the crown and the aristocracy, were accordingly 
introduced and carried in the spring of 1824. A general 
feeling also appeared at this time to prevail, that the crown 
was resuming by degrees a very large portion, if not of its 
prerogative, yet of its power ; and so many years had now 
passed since the restoration, that almost all apprehensions of 
any approaching disturbance of the public tranquillity were 
fast fading away. The king himself, though not of showy or 
popular qualities, was yet a man of sound and good under- 
standing. He had learned temper and caution in tnfc hard 
school of adversity. He was pious, but not superstitious ; 
and the welfare of his country appears to have been his 
chief and sincere object throughout a reign, during the whole 
continuance of which he was in depressed health, and fre- 
quently almost broken down by painful infirmities. He 
would, probably, however, have been a wiser king, if he had 
taken on him more than he did the character of a constitu- 
tional one. His hereditary claims would not have been felt 
the less strongly, though he had himself brcMght them for- 



Sony.] LOUIS XVIll 57i 

ward sviinewhat less. Every Englishman who had at that 
time any fiee intercourse with the middle classes in France, 
saw plainly that among those classes a strong under-current 
of opinion was setting against the court. And though the 
chamber of deputies was returned by not more than 110,000 
electors out of a population of not less than 29,000,000, yet 
there were evident indications that its sympathies with the 
people would increase by degrees, and to an extent not to be 
limited by any changes in its constitution, or in the law of 
elections, which any ministry could venture to propose. 

The complication of diseases by which the king was afflict 
ed, exhausted gradually his vital powers, and his existence 
became at length only a protracted agony, which he endured, 
however, with patience and resignation. The first prblic 
declaration of his being in actual danger, was made Septem- 
ber 12, 1824, and he died on the morning of the 16th. He 
was born November 17, 1755, and had married a princess of 
Saxony, who died at Hartwell in 1810 



CONVERSATION ON CHAPTER XLJ. 

George. Pray, mamma, was not that prince de Talley- 
rand, whom Louis XVIII. , as you said, made his prime min 
ister, one of the old leaders of the Revolution 1 

Mrs. M. He was a man of noble and indeed of illustrious 
descent, and was born in 1754. In the early part of his hfo 
he entered the church, and at the opening of the Revolution 
he was bishop of Autun : but afterward (I believe it was 
during Bonaparte's first consulship) he obtained a brief from 
the pope by which he was released from his ecclesiastical vows. 
In 1789 he was one of the deputies to the States-General, and 
espoused the most violent principles of the Revolution, of 
which he was a zealous and active leader. In 1792 he went 
to England on some secret mission or design ; but his footsteps 
were watched by the royalist emigrants, who denounced him 
to the English government, and procured an order for him to 
leave the kingdom. Not daring, at that time, to return to 
France, he sought an asylum in the United States of America, 
where he remained till the reign of terror was over, when he 
again sought the shores of his own country. Under the rule 
of the Directory he was made minister of foreign affairs, and 
he afterward held the same station for a considerable time 
under Bonaparte, in whose elevation to the supreme authority 



o72 LOUIS XVIII. (Chap. XLl 

by the revolution of November, 1799, he is supposed to have 
had a very large share. Bonaparte by turns caressed and 
insulted him ; but, knowing his great abilities, always feared 
him. In 1814 he took part in the restoration of the Bour- 
bons, and was sent by Louis to the congress of Vienna at 
French embassador. Napoleon, on his return from Elba, en- 
deavored to gain him over once more to his own cause. But 
Talleyrand was too wily a politician not to see that his old 
master's cause was now a desperate one. He remamed firm 
to his new master, and, as you have been told, had the seals 
of the foreign office confided to him on the second restoration 
in 1815. But he soon found it necessary to resign them. He 
then retired for a time from public life. In 1830, however, 
he was made embassador to England. He retained to a very 
late period of his life all his activity of mind, and his power 
of turning and sifting other people as he pleased, while he 
suffered no one to gain the least insight into his own thoughts. 
His manner was always guarded, and his countenance abso- 
lutely imperturbable. He died in 1838. 

George. Well I that is the last species of reputation that 
I should be ambitious of, either for myself or any of my friends. 
But what became of our old friend M. Fouche ? 

Mrs. M. During the eventful hundred days of 1815, M. 
Fouche appears to have been a traitor to both parties at once, 
and on the second restoration he assumed so much merit on 
account of the service which he had rendered to the Bourbons, 
that he was continued, as you were told, in office for a time. 
He was afterward made embassador to Dresden, by way of 
sending him into a sort of honorable banishment : but was at 
last denounced as a regicide, and condemned to death in case 
he re-entered the French territory. He died at Trieste in 
1820. 

Mary. I dare say, mamma, that all those people were of 
a great deal more consequence ; but I have been longing all 
this time to ask you something about the count Lavallette 
whom you mentioned, and how his wife managed to bring 
about his escape from prison. 

Mrs. M. On Lavallette's arrest in 1815, he was confined 
in the prison of the Conciergerie. His wife was admitted to 
see him there ; and after having tried in vain to procure his 
pardon, she contrived a plan for him to escape in a female 
dress, while she herself remained behind in his place. There 
are many stories of the escapes of other prisoners in the sama 
way, as for example, the account of lady Nithsdale's extricat 



Qorri.j LOUIS XVI] [. 573 

mg her iiusband from the tower of London, in the reigti of 
George I. But there is no other story of the kind 'which 
takes a more powerful hold of our feelings than this of madarac 
Lavallette. When she first proposed her scheme to her hus 
band, he was unwilling to agree to it. He thought, as he 
tells us in the account of his escape which he gives in his 
Memoirs, that it was an attempt which could not succeed, 
and he shrank from the idea of being detected in the disguise 
proposed, and of the derision which he would in that case 
have to encounter. Nor was he less reluctant to expose a 
wife whom he tenderly loved to the brutality with which the 
jailers might treat her when found in the prison. Madame 
Lavallette, however, would not listen to any of these objec- 
tions. " I die," she said to him, " if you die. Do not there- 
fore reject my plan. I know it will succeed. I feel that God 
supports me I" " How," he then adds, " could I refuse ? Emi- 
lie appeared so happy in her plan ; so sure of its success. It 
would be killing her not to give my consent." 

Accordingly, on the very evening before he expected to be 
taken to execution, madame Lavallette, accompanied by her 
daughter, came to the prison. A little before seven o'clock, 
LaA'-allette put on his disguise. His wife particularly cau- 
tioned him to stoop, that he might not break the feathers of 
his bonnet, as he passed through the doors of a large room, in 
which the turnkeys were stationed ; and she also cautioned 
him to walk slowly, like a person overcome by fatigue, and to 
cover his face with a handkerchief 

When the anxious moment arrived, Lavallette himself wen* 
first, then his daughter, and afterward an old nurse who had 
come with her. Lavallette, you may be sure, did not forget 
to stoop as he went through the door of the large room. On 
raising his head he found himself in the presence of five turn- 
keys. He put his handkerchief to his face, and waited for his 
daughter to come up, as she had been instructed to do, to his 
left side, that he might by that means avoid the politeness of 
the jailer, who had been used to conduct madame Lavallette 
by hQr left hand through the apartment. The child, by mis- 
take, went to her father's right, and thus gave room for the 
jailer to come up in liis usual way, and to put his hand on 
her arm, and to say, " You are going away early, madame." 
The man was evidently affected, and thought he was speak- 
ing to a wife who had just been taking a last leave of hel 
husband. 

The anxious ^larty reached at length the end of the room 



b74 i^OLUS XVllI. LChaf X/.l 

and were let out by tlie turnkey stationed there. They had 
Btill a few steps to ascend to reach the yard ; and at the bottom 
of these steps they encountered about twenty soldiers headed 
by their officer, who had placed themselves at a few pacea 
distance to see madame Lavallette pass. On reaching the 
top of the steps, Lavallette went immediately into a sedan- 
chair which had been stationed on that spot by his wife, as if 
to wait her own return. But no chairmen were there ; nor 
yet the servant who had been sent to see that they should be 
at their pests. Lavallette sat alone in the chair about two 
minutes, "minutes," he ssiys, "which seemed tome as long as 
a whole night." At last he heard the servant's voice, saying, 
"One of the chairmen was not punctual, but I have found 
another." At the same instant he found himself raised. The 
chair set him down in the Quai des Orfevres, and he then got 
into a cabriolet which was waiting for him. As he was driv- 
ing off, he saw his daughter standing on the Quai, her hands 
clasped, fervently offering up her prayers to God. In the car- 
riage he threw off his female dress, and put on a livery ; and 
he was then conducted to a place of concealment, where he 
continued about three weeks, before measures could be con- 
certed for his making his escape out of France. 

A remarkable part of the story is, that this place, in which 
he lay three weeks concealed, Avas an apartment in the hotel 
of the due de Richelieu, the prime minister. The occupier 
of this part of the hotel was a M. Bresson, who held an offiow 
under the government, a man not supposed to have any pai 
ticular sympathies with the friends of Napoleon, but led tc 
risk the giving an asylum on this occasion to poor Lavallette 
by the having formerly had a similar good deed done to him- 
self. He had been a member of the national convention, and 
had spoken and voted against the death of Louis XVI. In 
the violent times which followed, he was outlawed, and was 
obliged to fly. He found a retreat in the mountains of the 
Vosges, in the home of some kind people who received and^ 
concealed both him and his wife. Madame Bresson then 
made a vow that if Providence should ever give her the op- 
portunity, she would endeavor to show her gratitude for thia 
preservation of herself and her husband, by saving the life of 
some other person in similar circumstances. One of Laval 
lette's friends, knowing that she had made this vow, applied 
to her now to fulfill it ; and both she and M. Bresson gladly 
consented to receive the fugitive, and took all possible care of 
him till he could leave Paris Two British officers, Sir Rob 



'SoNV-I LOUIS XVIII. 575 

ert Wilson and captain Hutchinson, and their friend, Mr 
Bruce, got him off to Mons in the disguise of an EngHsh 
officer of the guards ; and from Mons he went into Bavaria. 
Sir Bobert Wilson and his two friends were apprehended on 
the charge of having aided his escape ; and in the following 
year were tried and found guilty, and sentenced to three 
months' imprisoiuiient. 

After six years of exile, Laval] ette was permitted to return 
to France, and there passed the remainder of his days in re- 
tirement. He died in the spring of 1830. 

Mary. And I hope that he and his gallant Avife were at 
last all quite comfortable and happy together. But did not 
she go to him when he was in Bavaria ? 

3Irs. M. Ah, my dear girl I there comes the sad part of 
the story. About five minutes after her husband's departure, 
the turnkey entered the prison, and there found madame La- 
vallette quite alone. She was kept six weeks in confinement, 
and is said to have been treated with coarseness and severity 
Either from this cause, or more probably from that extreme 
revulsion of spirits which often succeeds very violent agita 
tions of mind, she fell into a state of distressing melancholy 
and depression, from which she does not seem ever to have 
completely recovered. On her husband's return to Franco 
she is said not to have known him. She was at this timo 
living in some place of retreat for persons of deranged mind. 
At last her health recovered sufficiently to allow her husband 
to take her home. " Her deep melancholy," he says of her 
in his Memoirs, "throws her frequently into fits of abstraction ; 
but she is always equally mild, amiable, and good. We pass 
the summer in a retired country house, where she seems to 
enjoy herself." Lavallette himself did all that could be dono 
for her by care and affectionateness, and by devoting to her 
the life which she had saved.- 

Mary. This is, indeed, a most sad ending of the story : 
but still I hops that poor madame Lavallette's abstraction 
was not so great, but that she was awaie that heit husband 
%% last came back to her. 



CHAPTEPv XIJI. 

CHARLES X. 
^Years after Christ, 1824—1830. 

The new sovereign of France was, in point of uudorsland- 
uig, very inferior to his brother ; but he was good-humored 
and affable, and had greatly endeared himself, during his exile 
in England, to all persons with whom he was in habits of 
society. His great misfortune was, that he was too much in- 
fluenced by the party of the ultra-royahsts. His first meas 
ure, however, in behalf of a considerable body of persons who 
were, mostly, members of that party, was by no means gener- 
ally unpopular. 

In 1825, an act was passed to indemnify the heirs, or. if 
still alive, the original proprietors, of the estates confiscated 
and sold during the Revolution, by granting them amiuities 
from the public funds. This tardy justice, a justice which, 
indeed, was not only tardy, but also imperfect (for the annui- 
ties granted are not supposed to have been real equivalents), 
was all that now remained to be done. This measure was 
highly acceptable to the existing possessors of the lands, who 
had often felt apprehensive that they themselves might be 
called oil to restore them, in case of the predominance of the 
aristocratical party. And the claim of the parties to whom 
the annuities were granted, was the more apparent, because 
the unsold lands had been previously restored, partly by Na 
poleon, and partly by Louis, to the rightful inheritors. 

. Thus far all went smoothly, but in the same year was un- 
fortunately commenced a system of hostility to the press and 
the popular party, which did not terminate but with the 
reign. In 1827, seventy-six new peers were created, for the 
purpose of increasing the influence of the crown in the cham- 
ber of peers. The chamber of representatives was also dis- 
solved, in the hope that the new elections would prove favor- 
able to the court. But these measures proved wholly unsuc- 
cessful. The result of the elections was to weaken instead 
of strengthening the ministers, who consequently resigned ; 
and the king was left, for the time, without any other resource 
than to appoint an administration composed of persons of more 
liberal politics. 

On the 8th of August, 1629, this administration was dis< 
solved, and a new one i.'opointed, which had for its head 



A.D. 1827.] CHARLES X. 577 

prince Jules de Polignac, a person whose very name was ob- 
noxious to the people, from the recollections which it recalled 
of the influence supposed to have been exercised by his family 
over the mind of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette. Prince 
Jules, who was now recalled from England, where he was 
embassador, was received in Paris as the creature of the duke 
of Wellington, and the head of a faction supported by English 
intrigue. 

The popular leaders spread a general persuasion that the 
court would attempt to ru3e without a legislature, or, at least, 
to remodel the elective system to their own purposes, in some 
much more effective way than before. The chambers met 
March 2, 1830, and evidently showed that they shared these 
suspicions in no common degree. No act had yet proceeded 
from the new cabinet which could be construed into a direct 
attack on the public hberties ; but the address of the deputies, 
in answer to the speech from the throne, breathed so hostile a 
spirit, that the king again dissolved the chamber. 

A few days afterward new changes were made in the 
ministry. These, however, neither gave it strength, nor altered 
its character, and, in fact, argued little else than the imbecili- 
ty of a cabinet, which was perpetually shifting its members, 
without any visible object or efiect. The elections to the 
new chamber, which was appointed to meet on the 3d of 
August, augmented again the power of the opposition. What 
the result would be of its assembling under such circumstan- 
ces, it was impossible to anticipate without great apprehension. 
The general opinion was that the ministers would give way. 
If the voice of the chambers should still be against them, as 
would plainly be the case, they would be unable to carry 
their measures, except by force, and no preparation for the 
use of force was any where made. 

In 1827, the French government had sent a fleet, under 
admiral de Higny, to the coast of the Morea, for the purpose 
of joining the English in putting a stop to the barbarous 
warfare between the Greeks and the Turks. De Rigny, ani 
the English admiral, Codrmgton, acted in concert in the bat- 
tle fought in Navarino bay, in which the Turkish fleet was 
destroyed, and France, in like manner, subsequently became 
a party to the treaties by which Greece was finally extricated 
from the Turkish yoke, and made, at least ostensibly, an in 
depend6r<.t state. 

In the same year some disputes took place with Algiers, 
nd a blockading squadron was dispatched there to demand 
Bb 



S7S CHARLES X. [Chip. XLIi, 

satisfaction. Borae slight hostilities followed ; but these were 
only a prelude to the sending a formidable army there three 
years afterward. 

This army, which consisted of no less than ^7,000 men, 
sailed from Toulon on the 25th of May, 1830. It was com- 
manded by the comte de Bourmont, who had been originally 
a Vendean chief, but had tarnished his reputation by }u9 
readiness to join all parties, and had been a Bourbonist and 
a Bonapartist by turns. On June 14th, after encountering 
much hazy and baffling weather, the army was landed on the 
coast of Africa, at about fifteen miles to the west of Algiers. 
On the 4th of July, as the French were preparing an assault 
against one of the forts, the dey sent a flag of truce to treat 
for peace, and the terms finally settled were, that the town 
should be delivered up to France, and that the inhabitants 
should retain their private property and personal liberty, to- 
gether with the free exercise of their religion. The dey him- 
self was expelled, and finally took up his abode at Naples. 
It had been originally announced that this expedition had 
been fitted out for the purpose of causing the French flag to 
be respected by the piratical states, and not with any viewtt 
a permanent conquest; but no disposition to abandon the ne"w 
colony thus acquired has yet been shown. 

The news of this success reached Paris on the 9th of July, 
and it was for a moment hoped that it might gain some 
popularity for the ministers. The pubUc feeling was, how- 
ever, by this time too much decided to be easily turned. Od 
the 26th the king issued six ordinances, by which the liberty 
of the press was abohshed ; the newly elected chamber of 
deputies dissolved, though it had not yet met ; a new mode 
of election appointel ; and several individuals very obnoxious 
to the people nominated as members of the council of state. 
The intelligence of this subversion (for it was nothing less) of 
the charter was first communicated to the public by the ap- 
pearance of the ordinances in the government newspaper 
Even marechal Marmont, who had the military command, 
and was the person to be rehed on to suppress any tumult or 
insurrection, had not been apprized of what was intended. 
The king passed the day in hunting, and the ministers, al- 
though some mobs collected in Paris, and broke lamps and 
windows, and threw stones at prince Polignac's carriage, 
were so blind to their danger that they even congratulated 
each other on the tranquiUity of the capital. But these coxjr 
gfjatulatious were very premature. •^a;''^P>^ ■jjsuiJirjt.ooixi e .a 



A..D. 1830.] CHARLES X. 579 

During the whole of the next day the agitation went on in 
creasing. The military were called out, and in some plaesa 
the collected multitudes were charged hy the cavalry. In 
other places, after much forbearance, the streets were cleared 
by volleys of musketry. By these means a temporary repose 
was obtained at an early hour of the night, and the ministers 
again hoped that the contest was e^me to an end. Many 
persons also have thought that if the ensuing night had been 
passed by the government in active preparation for the" more 
serious contest of the next day, the insurrection might still 
have been suppressed. 

At an early hour of the morning of the 28th, large bodies 
of people were every where in motion. At nine o'clock the 
tricolor flag was seen to wave from the top of the cathedral 
of Notre Dame, and at eleven from the central tower of the 
Hotel de Ville. On this morning there also appeared in the 
throng several armed citizens arrayed in the old uniform of 
the national guard. The ministers declared the town in a 
state of siege, and Marmont, who had been disgusted at the 
weakness and precipitation which had brought affairs into 
this dangerous state, was now seriously alarmed for the result, 
and recommended to take measures of pacification. No at- 
tention was paid to this recommendation, and at mid-day he 
put the guards in motion. A series of contests ensued in all 
parts of the town, some of which lasted tiU late at night. The , 
troops fought under the disadvantage of being plunged in nar- 
row and crowded streets, in which, though, when they could 
act together, they surmounted all opposition, they were ex- 
posed to a harassing fire from the windows, and to the hurl- 
ing down on their heads of stones and tiles, or any other mis- 
siles that could be found. Even boiling water and oil were 
used as instruments of warfare on this occasion ; and it is said 
that one lady and her maid contrived to throw down a piano- 
forte on the heads of the adverse party in the streets. The 
scene on which the contest of this day took the most serious 
appearance was the Place de Greve, and the north end of 
Pont Notre Dame. Of these stations the guards took pos- 
session, though under a series of incessant attacks. But the 
troops of the line which had been appointed to support them 
refused to act, and the guards were therefore at length com- 
pelled to retire, first to the Hotel de Ville, and afterward td 
the Tuileries. There is no doubt that Marmont had exposed 
his trDops to these repulses by frittering them into small bodies , 
bat his heart had never been in the cause for which he was 



e50 CHARLES X [Cv . XLU 

figliting. He was pledged by the ofhoe wLich he bore to obej 
the orders of the government, but he saw and felt, at tb« 
same time, that it was going wrong. 

In the mean time, some of the deputies to the new cham- 
ber, which the king had dissolved, endeavored, but in vain, te 
restore tranquillity. They had assembled on the 27th, an^ 
Had protested against the fatal ordinances of the day before 
On the 28th a body of them proceeded to the Tuileries, ana 
had an audience with Marmont, who tried to persuade them 
to use their influence with the people to make them submit. 
They rephed that the ordinances must be repealed, and the 
ministers changed, before any conciliation could be attempted, 
and that if these things were not done, they must themselves 
take part agauist the government. Marmont wrote at five in 
the afternoon to the king, to express his opinion of the great 
danger of the crisis which had arrived, but received in return 
only an injunction to persevere in the use of force, and to act 
in larger masses than before. 

The night of the 29th was passed by the populace in erect- 
ing barricades across the principal streets, to hinder them 
from being penetrated or scoured by the troops. On the even- 
ing of the 27th they had made, in some places, a rude sort of 
blockade with carriages and omnibuses. They now broke up 
the pavement at intervals, and heaped it into mounds, which 
. they augmented with planks and pieces of furniture ; and they 
also cut down, and employed in the same manner, the trees 
of the Boulevards. All these preparations, however, were not 
brought to the trial. The soldiers, instructed by their expe- 
rience of the day before, did not attempt to penetrate again 
into the narrow streets, and maintained themselves during the 
whole of the morning of the next day in their positions. The 
populace made, however, several skirmishing attacks, and 
some of them fell by the fire of the guards. . 

The first approach to a decision of the contest was by the 
desertion of the regiments of the fine, at about noon of this 
day, the 29th. But before this was known, or during an in- 
terval in which the guards had been removed from their post, 
the populace made way into the garden in front of the Louvre, 
and thence, entering through the windows and glass doors, 
took possession of the whole interior of the edifice. The re- 
mainder of the guards were compelled to fly in disorder ; they 
rallied ibr a time in the Place de Carrousel, but were not sup- 
ported, and were again obhged to retire. Shortly afterwar'] 
Mannont relinquished the possession of the city to t!ip insixr 



A ». 1830.] tJHARLES X. 5»l 

gents. He wil\^dr> \f all the troops whom his orders could 
reach, and directed them to take the road to St. Cloud, in 
ordej to protect the person of the king. And thus, hy three 
in the afternoon, Paris was left entirely at the command of 
the populace. 

The ministers now tendered their resignations ; and the 
king, seeing the necessity of the c.ase, signed an order, by 
which he repealed the obnoxious decrees, and appointed a 
new ministry composed of men attached to popular principles. 
But before this order could be received in Paris, the Parisians 
had detennined that he should not be permitted to re-ascend 
the throne. 

As soon as the retreat of Marmont and his troops was as- 
certained, the deputies in Paris formed and proclaimed a pro- 
visional government. The national guard was called out, 
and general La Fayette was appointed to take the command. 
The personal influence and popularity of this veteran was 
exceedingly great with all classes of citizens. AU his orders 
were willingly obeyed ; and it is thought to have been greatly 
through the weight of his individual character that order and 
police were restored throughout the whole city before the 
close of the day. It is also remarked, that no instance has 
been recorded in which the disorder of these three days was 
made the occasion of any plunder, or of gratifying any private 
malice. 

Such was the revolution of the three days. Never before, 
probably, was any contest of so much moment, and so hotly 
contested, begun and ended so rapidly. There is a story of a 
party of Enghshmen, who had arrived in Paris, just at the 
time, on a tour of pleasure ; and who never found out what 
was going on. They perceived that there was a violent tu- 
mult, but being ignorant of the French language, did i. ot dis- 
cover its meaning, tUl they learned on their return home from 
the English newspapers, that they had been " assisting," as 
the phrase was, at a revolution. 

On the 30th of July, the deputies invited the duke of Or- 
leans to place himself at the head of the government, with 
the title of Ueutenant-general of the kingdom. The duka 
'accepted the offer without delay ; and on the following morn- 
ing issued a proclamation announcing his appointment, and 
adding, that the chambers were about to assemble, to con 
sider of the means to secure the reign of the laws, and the. 
maintenance of the rights of the nation, and that the chartei 
should henceforward be a reality. He afterward mA th«. 



482 CHARLES X. .Chap. XlII 

depatles and the members of the provisional government at 
the Hotel de Ville, and pledged himself still more strongly t* 
the most popular principles. 

In the mean time, the intelligence of these events was joy- 
fully received, as it spread into all parts of the kingdom. The 
tri-color flag waved every where. The troops submitted to 
the orders of the new government, the guards only continuing 
■o far their adherence to the court as to deem it their duty 
■till to protect the person of the sovereign. AU further con- 
test was hopeless. The court withdrew on the 31st of July 
from St. Cloud to Trianon, and on the following day to Ram- 
bouiUet.* Here, on the 2d of August, the king and the 
aauphin signed an act of abdication, the one of the crown 
itself, the other of his right of succession, in favor of the king's 
infant grandson the duke of Bordeaux, the son of the unfor- 
tunate due de Berri. This act of abdication the king ad- 
dressed to the duke of Orleans, and required him to proclaim 
the accession of Henry V. No such resource, however, to 
save the crown for this last scion of the direct stock of the 
Bourbons was now available. The duke of Orleans, either in 
liis eagerness to be king himself, or because he felt that the 
proposition came too late, suppressed, in announcing the king's 
and the dauphin's abdication, the stipulation coupled with it 
as to the duke of Bordeaux. But that the stipulation had 
been made was publicly known, and the news threw the cap- 
ital again into some confusion. 

The mob prepared in thousands to march to Rambouillet, 
in probably much the same temper in which, in the disas- 
trous period of August, 1789, another mob of Paris had 
marched to VersaiDes. But the king, though he had still 
guards who might, and probably would have defended him 
successfully against an undisciplined multitude, determined 
not to prolong an unavailing resistance. He set out for Cher- 
bourg, and on the next day dismissed his guards, retaining 
only a small escort. After a journey in which he was every 
where treated with respect, but not received with any indica- 
tions of attachment, he arrived at that port August 15th. He 
reached England on the 17th, and, after a short residence at 
Lulworth castle in Dorsetshire, proceeded to Edinburgh, 
where the ancient palace of Holyrood, wliich had been his 
place of abode during a great part of his former exile, now 
once more afforded him an asylum. 

The chamber of deputies proceeded on the 6th and 7t}i ot 

. * Southwest of Paris 



A.D. 1850.. CHARLES X r>B3 

August to revise the charter, and to make the formal apptiiit- 
ment of the new sovereign. They declared the throne to be 
vacant ; that not only the Roman Catholic, but that all min- 
isters of Christianity (and to these were added at a latei 
period those of the Jews) should be supported at the public 
expense ; and that all the peerages granted during the reign 
of Charles X. should be null and void. Finally they resolved 
that Louis Philippe, duke of Orleans, should be called to the 
throne, by the title not of king of France, but king of the 
French, in the same maimer in which Napoleon had been 
entitled emperor of the French, not of France ; and that he 
should be succeeded by his descer^darits in the direct male line 
only, in the order of birth. 

These resolutions of the house of deputies were transmitted 
on the same day (August 7) to the chamber of peers, though 
rather as a matter of courtesy than with any recognition of 
that house as possessing an independent voice in the legisla- 
ture. The viscount Chateaubriand spoke, but in vain, in 
behalf of the claims of the duke of Bordeaux. The declara- 
tion of the deputies was adopted, and on the 9th the constitu- 
ticm, as thus created, was formally tendered to, and accepted 
bj the new sovereign. 

Charles X. died at Goritz in Carniola, November 6th, 1836, 
and his son, the due d'Angouleme, who, as I have already 
said, had renounced the succession for himself, immediately 
proclaimed the duke of Bordeaux king of France and Navarre, 
by the title of Henry V. 

Louis Philippe was bom at Paris, October 6th, 1773. 
When he was nine years old, his education was confided to 
the celebrated comtesse de Genlis. In 1791, being then duo 
le Chartres, he commande'^ a regiment of dragoons, and in 
1792 he served as lieutenant-general under Dumouriez, and 
distinguished himself in the battle of Jemappes, which was 
fought that year against the Austrians. In 1793, finding 
that there was no longer any safety in France for a prince of 
his family, he emigrated to Switzerland. He afterward vis 
ited Norway and Sweden; and in 1796 took refuge in the 
United States of America, where he was joined in the follow- 
ng year by his two brothers, the due de Montpensier, and the 
comte de Beaujolais. In 1800 the three brothers came to 
England, where they established themselves for some years 
in a villa at Twickenham. During these years the duke of 
Orleans visited many parts of England, and impressed all 
who becami! acai'^inted with him with a very high ojunion 



dS4 CHARLES X. [Chap. Xl.U 

of liis abilities. After the fall of Napoleon lie returned tc 
Paris, and the command of the department of the North wag 
intrusted to him by Louis XVIII. during the early part of 
the eventful year 1815. 

But on the second restoration, the part which he took with 
the liberal or popular party offended the court, and he cons&> 
quently found himself obliged to retire into private life, in 
which hp continued till placed on the throne by the Revolu- 
tion of 1830. Whether he did wisely to exchange for that 
fatiguing and hazardous station, the peaceful enjoyment of the 
resources of his well-stored mind, and of his ample fortune, 
can only be known by those who can determine whether he 
acted from a sense of duty to his country, or from the tempta- 
tion of personal aggrandizement. 

The due de Montpensier, the next brother of Louis Phihppe, 
died in the year 1807, and the comte de Beaujolais, his other 
brother, soon afterward. 

Louis Philippe married in 1809 the princess Amelia, daugh- 
ter of the king of Sicily, by whom he has had seven children : — 

(1.) Ferdinand, due d'Orleans, bom September 3, 1810, 
died July 13, 1842. (2.) Louisa, born April 3, 1812. 
(3.) Louis Charles, due de Nemours, born October 25, 1814. 
(4.) Mavia Clementina, duchess of Beaujolais, born January 
3, 1817. (5.) Francis, prince of Joinville, bom August 14 
1818. (6.) Henry. (7.) Anthony Maria, duke of Montpen- 
sier, born July 31, 1824. 

The eldest son, the duke of Orleans, married Helena Louisa, 
princess of Mecklenburg, by whom he has left two sons : — 

(1.) Louis Philip Albert, count of Paris, born August 24, 
1S38. (2.) Robert Philip, duke of Chartres, bom Novem- 
ber 9, 1840. 

Louisa married in 1832, Leopold, king of Belgium, and 
has children. The due de Nemours married Victoria Augusta, 
princess of Saxe Coburg, and has one son, Louis Philippe^ 
count of £u. 



CHAPTER XLIII. 

LOUIS PHILIPPE. 

[Years after Christ, 1830—1848.] 

CBY THE EDITORO 

The elevation of Louis Philippe to the throne of Franc* 
was one of the most extraordinary and romantic changes in 
the personal history of an individual that has ever occurred. 
He had been, during the long years of his banishment from 
his native land, involved in extreme embarrassments and dif- 
ficulties, and was often exposed to great dangers. In Switz- 
erland, he was at one time reduced to the necessity of pro- 
viding for his own support by teaching a village-school. It 
was necessary, while doing this, that it should not be known 
who he was, as his enemies in Paris were intent upon his 
destruction. He accordingly assumed the fictitious name of 
Corby, and did every thing in his power to avoid having his 
trae rank and character known. 

He found, however, that all his precautions were not suf- 
ficient to secure his safety here, and he determined on going 
to America. But he was so reduced in his pecuniary cir- 
cumstances, that he could not raise funds to pay for his 
passage, and his long and unhappy wanderings in Denmark, 
Sweden, and Norway, were caused by his not being able 
either to leave the continent of Europe, or to remain in safety 
in any but the most remote and wildest portions of it. 

At last, however, he received a small supply of funds from 
his mother, and eagerly availed himself of the opportunity 
thus afforded him of going to America. He remained in 
America four years, and. although he received occasional re- 
mittances from his relatives and friends in France, he suffered 
a great deal of poverty and distress. He employed himself 
eometimes as a teacher of the French language, as the only 
means by which he could procure subsistence. 

When, therefore, by the revolution of 1830, he was re> 
stored to his former fortunes, and placed upon the French 
throne, he found that from being a houseless and homeless 
wandf^rer, hunted, in poverty and distress, from country to 



386 . LOUIS PHILIPfE. Chap. XLIIL 

country by implacable foes, he had suddenly become the most 
wealthy ai!*l powerful personage in Europe, and perhaps in 
the world. 

The character which Louis Philippe had formed in his 
adversity was such as to inspire great confidence in his 
honesty of purpose, and in his capacity to reign. He soon 
showed that he was very firm and decided in his moral and 
religious principles, very temperate in all his pleasures, do- 
mestic in his attachments, and strongly disposed to discounte- 
nance vice and immorality of every form. His wife, Ameha, 
joined him in these efibrts, and during his whole reign the 
family were greatly respected by aU mankind for their per- 
sonal worth. During all this period the Tuileries present- 
ed a scene of peace, and harmony, . and domestic virtue, 
and happiness, which royal palaces have seldom held up to 
view. 

By the constitution which the French people adopted, 
when Louis PhiHppe began to reign, only a veiy small part 
of the population were allowed to vote at the elections. 
They styled Louis Philippe King of the French, and not 
King of France, as it had been of old ; intimating, by this 
expression, that he derived his power from the action of the 
people, instead of being king by virtue of some divine and 
hereditary relation to the domain. The " French," how- 
ever, who thus upheld the new throne, were very feiv, 
compared with the great mass of the population. There 
were, perhaps, 70,000 who were entitled to vote, out of 
35,000,000. These voters elected the members of the 
chamber of deputies, which, in connection with the cham- 
ber of peers, constituted the great legislative power of the 
realm. 

There were now two courses of policy open before the king 
in the management of his kingdom. The people were very 
restless and uneasy ; divided into parties, each advocating 
its own peculiar system. One after another of these parties 
had been in the ascendant, until nearly all had tried, in vain, 
to manage public affairs. And now that the whole vast 
naval and military power is placed in the hands of Louis 
PhiHjpe, there are two courses that he may pursue. 

He may consider that some one strong central power is 
necessary to preserve order and maintain industry, in such a 
mass as the population of France. If so,. he will consider him- 
self and his dynasty — ^that is, the series of heirs which should 
foUow him in the succession — as that central power, and do 



\.D. 184S.J LOUIS PHILIPPE 5Sl 

all that lie can to strengthen and confirm this dynasty's posi- 
tion and power, drawing away for this purpose as much as 
possible of the power ami influence of the populace. 

Or, he may consider, Vhat, in the present age of the world, 
and with the present tendency to resist arbitrary and irre- 
sponsible rule, there could be no permanency in the govern- 
ment of France, until the power should be distributed through- 
out the community, and be shared by all who were interested 
in its exercise. If this were the view that he should take, 
he would widen and extend the suffrage, bring larger and 
larger masses of men to the exercise of it, and thus gradually 
and discreetly, so as not to compromise the public safety by 
too sudden changes, distribute the power among those who 
are, after all, the real principals, for whose benefit government 
shotdd be exercised. 

Louis Philippe decided in favor of the former of these plana 
— i. e. to centralize and strengthen as fast as possible his own 
power. He appointed his ministers, but insisted on directing 
all their movements, instead of leaving them, as is usual with 
royal cabinets, to manage public afiairs in their own way. 
One of them, in resisting this system, told him that " kings 
ehould reign, not govern." But Louis Philippe was not satis 
fied with reigning. He must-govern. He did govern, during 
the whole continuance of his power, with great energy, and, 
as has been generally admitted, with consummate skill. 

At the time that he commenced to reign, the French were 
at war with Algiers, a semi-barbarous nation on the African 
shores of the Mediterranean sea. The city of Algiers had 
been taken, and the plan had been formed of reducing the 
whole country to the condition of a French colony. Loui.s 
Philippe's government prosecuted this plan with great energy 
The cost in money, and the sacrifice of life were both enor- 
mous ; and the plans of the French were, for a long time, 
baffled by Abd-el-Kader, the great Arab general, whose in- 
domitable perseverance it seemed nothing could subdue. He 
submitted, however, at last, and the whole country became a 
French province. 

Another of the great measures of Louis Philippe's reign 
was what was called the fortification of Paris. The works 
comprise a very extended chain of walls, forts, bastions, and 
towers, extending all around the city, at a distance of a few 
miles from it, with barracks connected with them capable of 
containing a very effective garrison. The building of these 
fortifications was much opposed by a large portion of tha 



SB8 LOUIS PHILIPPE, :Chap. XLUi 

people of France. The ostensible design was to defend th<! 
city from foreign and invading foes ; but it was thought in 
Paris that the real object of this anued environment of tho 
city was to enable the king the better to maintain his ascend- 
ency over Paris itself, in case of its making any attempt to 
resist his power. Notwithstanding this opposition, however, 
the fortifications were built, and the people of Paris found 
themselves shut up within them, as in a sort of pneon. 

Louis Phihppe made great efforts, during his whole reign, 
to strengthen his position and that of his dynasty, by arrang- 
ing the marriages of his sons in such a manner as to connect 
them with the leading families of Europe, and thus to form 
powerful alliances. One of these alliances gave great of- 
fense to the English government. It was the marriage 
of the duke de Montpensier, liis youngest son, to a Spanish 
princess. 

This Spanish princess was a younger daughter : her sister 
Isabella, older than herself, was the queen. But, then, sho 
might die without direct issue, and, in that case, the crown 
would devolve upon Maria Louisa, for that was the younger 
sister's name. The marriage, therefore, of both these sisters 
became a subject of great political importance, and it was 
discussed for a long time by all 4;he courts of Europe. Each 
government had its candidates. Louis Philippe, however 
contrived to succeed in the accomplishment of his own plans, 
and the defeat of the others. The queen of Spain was mar 
ned to her cousin, a Spanish grandee, of her own family, ano 
the princess Maria Louisa to the duke of Montpensier. This 
was done against the strong and earnest opposition and re- 
monstrance of England ; for, in the event of the queen's dying 
without issue the duchess of Montpensier would succeed to 
the throne of Spain ; and as her husband might also, by a 
similar exigency become king of France, it was rendered pos- 
sible, by this marriage, that France and Spain might be unit- 
ed under the same crown. It is true, that, in such an event 
as this, the duke of Montpensier himself would not inherit 
both crowns. He would be ki\ig of France, and his duchesa 
queen of Spain ; but, then, their oldest son would be the sole 
monarch of both realms. 

The marriages were consummated, however, notwithstand- 
ing all opposition, and Louis Philippe and his government 
congratulated themselves on the success of their plans for 
strengthening the position and power of the dynasty which 
the king represented. Every thing seemed secure. As th» 



A.D. 1848. J LOUIS PHILIPPE. 588 

chamber of deputies was elected by so small a number of 
voters, it was easy to influence these voters, by n cans alwaya 
at the disposal of a powerful government, to elest such men 
as would favor the king's views. Thus in all questions dis- 
cussed in the chambers, great majorities were found to take 
the side of the king. The fortifications of Paris were com- 
plete, and the king had a very large army to defend them. 
He had also great forces distributed in every part of the city 
of Paris, and others on all the frontiers of the empire. Every 
thing indicated that his power was established on a firm and 
permanent basis. The internal affairs of the empire were 
well managed, and every thing went on in a peaceful, pros 
perous, and orderly manner. 

As might naturally have been supposed, however, the 
measures which Louis Philippe adopted, had the effect of 
drawing off' power from the people more and more, and plac- 
ing it in his own hands, and in that of his govermnent. The 
consequence was that the more his own authority was con 
centrated and strengthened, the more widely had he separated 
himself from the people at large. They found their influence 
in the government dwindling gradually away. They began 
to call for a reform in the elective franchise, so that a greater 
proportion of the population might vote. Meetings began to 
be held in favor of this change. They were called reform 
banquets. As soon as these banquets began to exert a sensi- 
ble influence, the government forbade them. This brought 
on a crisis. 

There was to have been one of these reform banquets in 
the Elysian fields, at Paris, in February, 1848. The govern- 
ment ordered that it should not be held. The people began 
to make preparations for assembhng, notwithstanding the pro- 
hibition. The king called out his troops. There was a short 
and very feeble struggle, ended by the troops going over in a 
body to the people's side, and the king flying from Paris ■ 
once more an exile and a wanderer. 

The people declared the monarchy abrogated, and pro- 
olaimed a republic. They appointed a provisional govern- 
ment to reign, until a great convention could be called to 
prepare a constitution. Louis Philippe and his family fled 
to England. He had to assume a disguise in order to make 
his way safely to the sea-shore. He wandered about for some 
days, in great anxiety and fear, and then succeeded in getting 
into a little fishing-boat, and crossing the channel with hii 
queen. Befcre landing he was taken off f«om the fishing 



590 LOUIS PHILIPPE. [Chap. XLill 

boat by an English steamer, and earned to the English 
shore, in an utterly destitute condition. He was soon re- 
lieved from these urgent necessities, and he has now sought 
retirement in the palace of Claremcnt, in England, a beau* 
tiful retreat belonging to his son-in-law, Leopold, the king 
of Belgium. 



INDEX. 



cj. B. • The lefercnces to the Conversationt are included in parenthc 



Abelard (107) 

Abd-el-Kader, 587 

Abercromby, Sir E,., 533, 534 

Absolution (192) 

Acre (183). See Sieves. 

Admiral of France (355) 

Advertisements (403) 

Advice to the ladies (222, 223) 

Agnes Sorel, 246 (247) 

Aix la Chapelle. See Peace. 

Aix in Provence, 14 

Alans, 16 

Alberoni, 454 

Albigenses (119, 120) 131, 140 

Alcuin, 33 (37) 

AlenQon, Francis duke of, afterward 

dukeofAnjou. See Anjou, 
Alexander III., pope, 116 (122, 123) 

VI., pope, 2S7, 289 (294) 

Alexandrine measure (138) 

Alexis. See Comnenus. 

Alfonso of Castile, 161 

Alfred (36) 

Algiers, expeditions against, in 1827 

and 1830, 577, 578; becomes a 

French colony, 587 
Allegorical pictures (405) 
Alva, duke of, 342, 343 
Amelia, wife of Louis Philippe, 586 
Amboise, conspiracy of, 331 
Amphitheatres at Nismes, and in 

Normandy (17) 
Ancients, council of, 528 
Angan (18) 
Anglo-mania (542) 
Angoul6me, Louis d'Antoine, duke 

of, 5S0, 568, 570 

, duchess of (516-521) 

AnjoTi, Francis duke of, 359 (371) 
Anne of Austria, 389, 406, 408 

• ladyof Beaujeu. See Beaujeu. 

of Bretagne, 274, 275, 287, 292 

(293) 

ofEste (337) 

Anquetil (424) 

Antipopes (122, 250) 

Aquitaine, 15, 16, 52 

Archers, 247 

Architecture (295, J96, 313-315). See 

Churches, Houses, aid Lombard. 
Aries. See Provence. 



Armagnacs. See BurgundiaiM 

Armorial bearings (98, 99) 

Armor (367) 

Armorica, 16, 25 

Army of occupation, 558, 569 

Arnulf, 52 

Arquebuss. See Fire-arms. 

Arthur of Bretagne, 128 

Asti (283) 

Astolphus, 30 

Asti-ology (214) 

Athelstan, 54 

Anbri de Montdidier (237) 

Augsburg, treaty of in 1686, 430 

Avignon sold to the popes, 211. Seo 

also (250) and Clement V. and 

Sieges. 
Austrasia, 23 
Austria, emperor of, 546 

Bajazet, 234 

Balafre. See Guise, Claude, duKt 

of 
Baldwin, earl of Flanders, and first 

Latin emperor of Constantinople 

(134-136) 
Baldwin IL (134) 
Banner of St. Martin (120, 121) 
Barbarossa, Frederic, 113 (122) 
Barricades in Paris, 403, 580 
B arry, Madame du (476) 
Bartholomew, St. See Massacre of. 
B assompierre (386) 
Bastile stormed in 1789, 498 
Battle of Aboukir, 532 

Agincourt, 231 (234) 

Aignadel, 290 

Alexandria, 535 

Almanza, 436 

Arques, 372 

Aspeme, 548 

Austerlitz, 545 

B autzen, 553 

Blenheim, 435 

— - Borodino, 549 

Bouvines, 129 (135) 

the Boyne, 431 

Camperdown, 531 

Cape la Hogue, tiS 

the Clain, 21 

Cressy, 194, 195 



b92 



INDEX. 



Battle ofDettingen,, 458 

Dresden, 553 

Eckmuhl, 548 

■ Essling:, 548 

Eylau, 547 

Fontenay in 841, 44 

Fontenoy, 459 • 

Fomova (283) 

Friedland 547 

Hohenlinden, 534 

^ Jamac, 344 

— — ^ Jena, 546 

Ivry, 372 

Leipsic, 5t3 

Lens, 407 

Ligny, 551 

Lodi, 528 

^ Lutzen, 553 

Marengo 553 

Mariendahl, 407 

Marignano, 298 

Minden, 471 

Montmartre, 554 

Najara, 217 

• ■ Navarino, 577 

'■ the Nile, 527 

' — ' — — — Nordlingen, 407 

Pavia, 303, 304 

Poitiers, 204-206 

■ the Pyramids, 531 

■ duatre Bras, 557 

Q-Uehec, 471 

' Rocroi, 406, 407 

: St. auentin, 321, 32£ 

Sluys, 193 

' Solebay, 415 

the Spurs, 291 

Tolentino, 559 

Trafalgar, 546 

Wagram, 548 

■ Waterloo, 558 

Bavaria, Charles, elector of, after- 
ward the Emperor Charles VII., 
457-459 , 

, Maximilian, elector of, made 

king by Napoleon, 545 

Bayard, Chevalier (315-317) 

Beards and mustaches (387) 

Beaujeu, Anne, lady of, 267, 273-275, 
287 (295) 

Bed of justice (179) 489 

Beds. See Furniture. 

Begging' scholars (213) 

Bells (39) 

Benedict XL, pope, 174 

Benerentum, duke of; 32 

Beresina, passage of, 553 

Bemadotte, 548, 554 

Bernard, St. Ill, 112 (120) 

; — -. de Ravs (136) 

Berri, Charles Ferdinand, due de, 
assassinated, 561 - 



Bertha, 23 

-, of Burgundy, qaeen of B.obei1 



the Pious, 73 
Beziers (120) 
Biron, marshal, 379 
Black death. See Paiueivee. 
Blanch of Castile, 131, 141, 146, 149 

(154, 155) 
Blucher, 554 

Boat's crew of the Majestic (540, 541) 
Boemond, 94 (96) 
Boeuf gras. See Procession, 
Bonaparte. See Napoleon. 

, Jerome, 547, 548 

, Joseph, 545, 546 

■, Louis, 546 



Boniface VIIL, pope, 173, 174 
Bonivet, 301-304 

Bordeaux, Henry, due de, 561, 583 
Borgia, 287 (294), snd see Alexan- 

der VI. 
Bossnet (442) 
Boufflers, 432, 435, 436 
Bouille, 484 

Boulogne, count of (154) 
Bourbon, constable de, 301-307. See 

also (311, 312, 317) 
■, due de, 455 



Bourbons, their descent from Louis 
IX., 153, 330, 331 

, their restoration in 1814- 



1815, 554, 555, 558 
Breda, treaty of, 413 
Brest (424) 

Bretagne, duchy of. See Armoriea. 
Bridge Fraternity, the, 297 
Bridges in Paris (138) 
Brissot, 506 
Brissotines, ib. 
Branhault, 22, 2?), 25 
Bruno, St., 56 
Brunswick, duke of, his manifesto, 

503 ; enters France, 504, and sea 

523 
Brutus. See Romances. 
Buche, Captal de, (212) 
Burgundians, 15, 16 

- and Armagnacs, 229- 



232 

Burgundy, dukes of (271) ; and set 
Louis. 

Calixtus n., pope, 102, 103 
Calonne, 487, 488 
Cambray, league of, 290 
Campobasso, 263 
Campo Formio, treaty of, 529 
Canal of Languedoc (124) 
Canons of Notre Dan e (154, 155) 
Capet dynastv. 187 , and see H»gk 
Cards (236, 237; 
Carloman, 24, 29. 3' n 



INDEX. 



S!n« 



Carlovingiau dynasty (63, 64) 

Castles in France (168, 169) 

Catherine de Medicis, 308, 318 (324, 
333-338), 339 (354), 358, 360-363 

Catinat, 432 

Celtic language (26) 
Latin, ib. 

Chamber of Deputies dissolved by 
Charles X., 578, 580 

Champs de Mai (39) 

■ de Mars, ib. 

Chanteloup (476) 

Character of the English and Scotch 
(214) 

of the French army (215) 

Charibert I., 22, 25 

II., 23, 25 

Charlemagne, 31; bis wars with 
the Saxons, 31, 32, 34; his con- 
quest of Italy, 32 ; crowned at 
Milan, ib. ; invades Spain, and 
is defeated at Roncesvalles, ib. ; 
takes possession of Bavaria, 33; 
defeats the Hans, ib. ; his expe- 
dition against the Normans, 34 ; 
■ his death, 35; extent of his em- 
pire, z6 ; his character, 31 (36-38) 

Charles the Bald, 43, 46 

THE Fat, 46, 51, 52 

THE Simple, 52, 54 

. IV. (the Fair), 186, 187, 

• V. (the Wise), 216, 217 ; 

his death and character, 220 (221, 
222) 

VI., 224-226 ; his alarm in 



Charles VII., elector of Bavaria, 
457 ; elected emperor, 458 ; hia 
death, 459 

, ai'chduke, 529 

, Martel, 24, 25 

, duke of Lorraine, 56, 58, 



the forest at Mans, 227 ; his insan- 
ity, 228 ; and death, 234 

• VII., 231-233, 239 ; recovers 



Paris from the English, 245 , his 
death, 246 

VIII., 272 ; marries Anne 



of Bretagne, 275 ; invades Italy, 
277 ; conquers Naples, 279 ; re- 
treats into France, ib. ; his death, 
282 

IX., 339; his last illness 



and death, 350, 351 ; and see (351— 
353) 

X. (495) ; his accession, 560, 



576; his unwise politics, 576 ; with- 
draws from Paris, 582 ; abdicates, 
ib. ; retires to England, ib. ; his 
•death, 583 

v., emperor of Germany, 



290, 299, 300, 304, 305 ; his wars 
with Henry II., his abdication and 
death, 320, 321 ; and see (327-329) 
and Francis I. 

II. of England, 412, 413 

IL of Spain, 412, 414 

III. of Spain, 436, 437, 471 

IV. of Spain, 547 



65, 66 



Valois. 



of Anjou, 150-153, 159-163 

the Lame, 163, 171 

of Valois, 1 75, 184, 186. See 

de Blois, 220 

the Bad, king of Navarre, 

203, 207, 208, 220, 221 

the Bold, duke of Burgun- 



dy, 257, 258, 261, 262; his cruelties 
at Liege, 260 ; defeated at Gran- 
son, 263 : killed at Nanci, ib. 

Charolois. See Charles the Bold 

Chateau Gaillard (62) 

Chatillon, congress of, 550 

Chevelures, les rois, 25 

Childebert I., 22, 24 
IL, 23, 25 



Childeric I., 15 

II., 25 

III., 30 



Chilperic I., 22, 25 
IL, 25 



Chimneys (182) 

Chivalry (83-86) 

Chouans, 527 

Christianity introduced into Gaol, IS 

Churches (39, 40, 144, 145) 

, architecture (295, 296) 

Cisalpine Gaul (17) 

republic, 529 



Civil wars of France ^324) 
their eflfect (366) 



Clement V. removes the papal sea 
to Avignon 176 

VII., pope, 301, 306 



Clergy, French, their ejection from 

their benefices in 1790, 501 
Clocks (40, 41) 
Clodoald, 22 
Clodomir, 22, 24 

Closter Seven, convention of, 469 
Clothaire I., 22-24 

IL, 23, 25 

IIL, 25 

IV., 25- 



Clotilda, 20, 22 

Clovis L, 16 ; bis conversion to 

Christianity, and s sbseqiient reigi^ 

20, 21 

IL, 25 

IIL, 25 



Clubs (385) 
Coaches (385) 
Coinage. See money. 
Colbert, 413. ,424) 428 



Mi 



INDEX. 



Ooligrny, 321, 322, 331, 344-347 (354, 

355) 
Commes. 259, 260 (270) 279 (282-284) 
Communal charters granted by Louis 

VI., 105, 106 
Comnenus, Alexis, 89, 92 (134) 

-, Isaac (134) 

Conciergerie (519) 

Concini, 388-391 

Conde family, their descent, 331 ; 

Louis I. prince of, ib., and 332, 340, 

341 ; murdered at Jamac, 344 
, Henry I. (354) ; his death, 

360 

, Henry IT., 355, 392, 405 

-, Louis II., the great 406, 407, 

409-411, 415-417 

-, Louis Joseph, 501 



Confederation of the Rhine, 546 
CoNRADE the Pacific (60) 

IIL, 112, 113 

Conradin, 151, (154) 
Constance, council of (250, 251) 
Constance of Provence, second wife of 

Robert the Pious, 73-75 (76-78) 80 
Constantinople taken by the Turks 

(253, 254) 
Consuls, 532 
Continental system, 547 
Corruptions of the church, 82 (87) 
Corsica, 472, 527 
Court of Louis XIV. (447-450) 
Courtenai, Peter and Robert (134, 

135) 
Cromwell, 411 

Crests and coats of arms (98, 99) 
Crusade preached by Sylvester II., 

74 

, the first, 89, 90 

, the second, preached by St. 

Bernard, 111-115 

, the child's (124) 

^, the fourth 126, 127 

, the fifth, 132 

, the sixth, 147-150 

, the seventh, 152, 153 

Crusades, their termination (182). 

See also (96-99, 133, 134, 155-158) 

Dagobert I., 23, 25 

II., 25 

III., 25 

D'Albret, Henry, king of Navarre. 

See Navarre. 
Dampierre, Guy, earl of Flanders, 

171, 172 
Daniel's History of France (200) 
Banton, 506 (537) 
D'Aubigne (384, 385) 
Dauphin, the Grand (441, 442). See 

Burgundy, Louis, duke of. 
• — . , son of Louis XV. (475, 476) 



Dauphinesses (442, 444) 
Decazes, 568 
De Grasse, 486 
Delphin classics (450) 
De Luynes, 389, 390 
De Montfort, John, 196, lOr 
•, his son, 220 



De Retz (419) 

De Ruyter, 415-417 

Desaix killed at Marengo, 531 

Desportes (369) 

Dessolles, 568 

D'Estaing 485, 486 

D'Estrees, cardinal (449) 

Detenus, 535, 536 

De Thou (383) 

Diana of Poitiers 319, 321, 323 (365) 

Didier, 31, 32 

Dinner hour (544) 

Directory, 528, 532 

Discipline. See Schools. 

Disguisements (284) 

Dog of Montargis (237, 238) 

Doublet (369) 

D'Orvilliers, 484, 485 _ 

Dragonade under Louis XIV., 429 

Dress of the 10th century (78) 

nth (100) 

13th and 14th (180) 

14th (223) 

15th (254, 368) 

— 16th and 17th (386, 401, 



• reign of Louis XV. (47<IJ 



449) 



Du Clisson, 219, 226 
Duels (60) 
Du Guesclin, 217-219 
Dumouriez, 523 
Dunkirk, 411, 412 
Dnrazzo, 225, 233 

Education of the young nobility (84^ 
Edward the Confessor, 76, 82 

— I. of England, 163, 170, 171 

IL of England, 18S 

III. of England; his ground 



of pretension to the throne of 
France, 193 ; invades France, 194 , 
see also 209, 210 ; his death, 219 

IV. of England, 262 

the Black Prince, 217-219 



Eginhard, 31, 35 (37) 

Egypt, expedition to, in 1798, 530, 

534 
El Arish, convention of, 534 
Eleanor of Guienne marries Louis 

VII., 104 ; divorced, and marries 

Henry IL of England, 116 
Elgiva, 54 

Elizabeth queen of England (368) 
Elizabeth Philippine of France 50i^ 

507, 509, 512, (518, 521) 



: INDEX. 



691 



issijigran.'ias of the French revela- 
tion, 499, 501 
Encouragement of learning (107) 
End of the world expected (78) 
Escurial (329) 
Eudes, 51, 52 
Eugene, prince, 432, 436, 438, 456 (463) 

Fabliaux (166) 

Faineans. Siee Sluggaid kings. 

Falots (404) 

Family compact, 471 

Famine in the reign of Robert the 
Pious (79) 

Farmers of Taxes (198) 

Fastrade, 33 

Fauchet (403) 

Fayette, 500, 581 

Feast of the Ass (285) 

Fenelon (443) 

Ferdinand of Aragou, 289-291, 298, 
299 

of Spain, 547, 548, 559 

Fersen (5-\2, 513) 

Feudal system (68-70, 178); its 
abases, 102 

Fiefs. S'se Feudal 

Field of the Cloth of Gold, 300 

Fire-arms (367) 

Flanders, 186 

, earl of (155, 164) 

, Baldwin of. Emperor of 

Const»«itinople, 135 

Fleury, Cardinal, 455 ; his death, 456 

Florida. See French. 

Fouquek (422) 

France, general survey of, 13-15 

, its state in the 10th century 

(60, ei) 

' , nth century (95) 

, 14th century, 206 

— ^— joins with the United States 
of America in the war against En- 
gland, 484 ; revolution in, its com- 
mencement, 498 ; attack on Ver- 
sailles, Oct. 6th, 1789, 499 ; royalty 
abolished, 506 ; war of the revolu- 
tion; conquest of Flanders and 
Hdlland, 527 ; of Italy and Switzer- 
land, 528-530; saspended by the 
treaty of Campo Formio, 529 ; re- 
newed, 530 ; again suspended by 
the peace of Luneville, 534 ; and of 
Amiens, 535 ; recommenced with 
England in 1803, 535; with Ger- 
many, 545 ; with Russia and Prus- 
sia, 546 ; invasion of Portugal, 547 ; 
ofSpain, 548; expedition to Russia, 
549-553; concluded by the peace 
of 1814 and that of 1815, 555, 559. 
See Army of occttpaiio^ and Q aul. 

Franciad (369) 



Francis I., his accession and charac- 
ter, 297, 307 ; invades the Milanese, 
298 ; defeated and taken prisone: 
at Pavia, 303 ; restored to liberty, 
305 ; renews the war with Charles 
v., 306 ; again makes peace, 307 ; 
his death, 310 ; and see (312, 313, 
324, 387) 

11., hia accession, 330 ; his 



death, 332 

11., emperor of Germany, 



503 

Francisque (18) 

Franklin, Dr. (541) 

Franks invade and conquer Gaul, 
make Treves their capital and take 
Paris, 15 ; and see (18, 19) 

Fredegarius (26) 

Fredegonde, 23, 24, 25 

Frederic. See Barbarossa. 

II. of Prussia 457-459, 468- 



470 (479-482) 
Free companies, 204, 208, 216, 217 
French Academy (403) 

; emigrants (510, 539) 

'■ character (367) 

Florida (355) 



Friday, why thought an unlucky day, 

289 
Frobisher (199) 
Froissart (211) 227 (254) 
Fronde, contests of, 408-410 (420) 
Furniture (383) 

Gabelle, 196 (197) 

Gabrielle d'Estrees (386) 

Galeazzo, 277 

Galleys (356) 

Galley-slaves, ib. 

Garden of Plants, 400 

Gaston de Foix (295) 

Gaul, or Gallia, conquered by Juliui 

Cffisar, 15; its division under tb« 

Romans, 15 

, Cisalpine (17) 

Gauls, their religion (20) ; laws (2T 

28) 
Gazette (403) 
Genlis, Madame de (496) 
Geoffry Plantagenet 104, 116 
de Pruilly (99) 



Geography (87) 
George II. of England, 453 
Gerbert, 66, 67 (70, 71, 79) 
German language (49, 50) 
Gertruydenburg conferenceB 43T 
Ghent, its revolt, 264, 265 
Giant. See Procession. 
Gibraltar, siege of 486 
Gipsies (238, 239) 
Giradon (400) 
Girordists, 506 



A96 



INDEX. 



Glaber (78) 

Gobelin tapestry (3'J8) 
Godfrey of Bouillon., (9:, 92; 
Golden legend (384) 
Gondebaud (60) 
Gonsalvode Cordova, 5.80 
Qonthran, 22, 23 
Gaths (18) 

Gothic language (27) 
Great Harry (35.5) 
Greek fire 148 (167, 168) 
Greenland, "West (198, 199) 
Gregorian calendar, 365 
Gregory of Tours (26) 

v., pope, removes the papal 

see from Avignon to E/Ome, 221 
Groombridge (248) 
Guelphs and Ghibelins (T22) 
Guernsey. See Jersey. 
Guillotine (538) 
Guiscard (96) 
Guise, dukes of, their descent, 319 

Claude, duke of, ih.^ takes 

Calais, 322 ; murdered by Poltrot, 
342, 343 ; see also pp. 330-333, 339ir- 
348 

Haroun Alraschid (40, 41) 

Hastings 47 

Henault 200 

Henry I., 80-83 

II. marries Catherine of Me- 

dicis, 308 ; his accession and char- 
racter, 318 ; his death 323 

III., when duke of Anjou, 

elected king of Poland, 349 ; suc- 
ceeds to the crown of France, 357 ; 
murdered by Clement, 364 ; and 
see (366-371) 

IV., 344, 347, 359, 360, 363 ; 

his descent, 153 ; his accession and 

■ character, 371-373, 378; marries 

• Margaret of Valois, 345 ; divorces, 
her and marries Mary of Medicis, 
378 ; renounces Protestantism 375 ; 
his designs against the house of 
Austria 379 ; assassinated by Ra- 
■V aiUac, 380 ; see also (367, 381, 385- 
388) 

the Fowler, 55 

the QuaiTcler (60) 

— " v., emperor, his contest with 
the cardinals on the right of choos- 
ing the Pope, 89, 102 

II. of England 111, 116 

III., 140, 152 

rV.,230 

—~—— v., invades France, 230 ; de- 
clared regent of France, and mar- 
ries the princess Catherine, 233 ; 
his death, 234 

VII., 276 



Henry VIII., 291, 300, 308, 309, (387 

See Francis I. 
— — , duke of Burgundy, 74 

of Trastamare, 217 

Hermengard, 43 

Hildegarde, 33 

Hincmar (49) 

Hoche, 513, 529 

Holland incorporated tfith Fram^ 

549 
Homage (68, 69) 
Houses of the 14th century (314) ; of 

the 16th (383, 384) 
Huet (450, 451) 
Hugh Capet, 57, 64-67 
Hugh the Fair, 54, 57 
Hugonots, 331, 332 ; their powei 

broken by Richelieu, 391, 396; 

persecution of, by Louis XIV., 428- 

432 ; and see also (324, 325, 336, 337, 

368) 
Huns 16, 32, 33 
Hutchinson, Lord, 535 

Jacobins, 506, 524 
Jacquerie, 207 (211) 
James II., king of England, 431 
v., king of Scotland, 308 



Jane d' Albert, dueen of Navarre 

(338) 

of Bourbon, 220 (222) 

, countess of Flanders (135-137) 

Jardin des Plantes. See Garden of 

Plants, 
Iconoclasts, ?0 
Jerome of Prague (251, 252) 
Jersey and Guenisey( 142-144} 
Jesuits (325, 326) 

, suppression of the, 472 

Jews, 74, 132 (120, 188) 

Images introduced into churches, 30 

Indulgences (191, 192) 

Infidelity of the reign of Louis XV., 

474, 475 
Ingeberge, 128 
Iimocent II., pope, 111 

•III., pope, 128, 129 



Inquisition (120) 
Interdict, 73 
Invasion, projected, of England ia 
1798, 530 

in 1803, 536 



Joan of Arc, 241-243 
Joanna, queen of Naples, 225 

, archduchess, mother (fCharlea 

v., 290, 320 
Jodelle (309) 

John (the Good), 202; defeated and 
made prisoner at Poitiers, 204, SOS 
released, 210 ; bis death, ib. 

XXIII., pope (250) 

, ting of England, 127-188 



INDEX 



59; 



Jonn Huss (251) 

of Prucida, 161 

Joinville, 149 (155-15V) 
Josephine, 549 (564) 
Ire-.d, 33 

Iron crown of Lombardy (41) 

mask (463-466) 

Isabella of Bavaria, 226, 230 (249) 

of Castile, 289, 290 

of Hainault, 127, 128, 132, 

139 

Itinerant merchants (61) 
Jubilee, 178 (190, 191) 
Julius II., pope, 289-291 
Junot, 547 

Kleber, 533 

Knighthood (99). See Chivalry. 

Knights' fees (29) 

service, ib. 

Kutusoff, 549-551 

Labedotere, 566 

Lackeys (404) 

Ladies at court (313) 

La Grande FranQaise (355) 

Lamballe, princess, 504, 505 (515, 

516) 
Langue d'oc (49, 50) 

d'oil, ib. 

Latin empire of Constantinople (134) 

language (26, 27) 

Latins in Palestine (182, 183) 
La Trimouille, 288, 304 
Lavallette, 566, 567 (572-575) 
LauU-ec301, 307 
Lauzun, duke of (421-423) 
Law, 454 

Lazar-houses (133, 188) 
League, 358 

of God's house (71, 86) 

of the public good, 256, 258 

Learning of the reign of Louis VI. 

(106-108) 
Leo III., pope, 33 

- X., 291; his death, 301 
Lepers (188) 

Ligurian republic, 529, 530 

Liutbart, 52 

Lombard style of architecture (295, 

296) 
L'Hopital, 332, 333, 339, 350 
Lorraine, 44 ; united with France, 

457 
Lothaire, son of Louis le Debonnaire, 

43-46 (50) 

, son of Louis the stranger 56 

LoDis I. (le Debonnaire), 34, 42, 43 
-— II. (the Stammerer), 46 

III., 46 

IV. the (Stranger), 55, 56 

V. (the Sluggard), 58 



L0U13 VI (the Fat), ICI ; his wan 
with Henry I. oJ England, 102, 103 
his death, 104 ; and see (107) 

VII. (the Young), marries Elea- 
nor of Guienne, 104 ; his accession 
and character, 110, 111 ; engages in 
the crusade, 1 12 ; returns to France 
115; divorced from Eleanor of 
Guienne, ib. ; his two subsequent 
marriages, 116 , his war with En 
gland, 117 ; his death, 118 

VIII. (the Lion), 131, 139 ; his 

war with England, 140 ; his death, 
ib. 

IX. (the Saint), 146 ; his first 

crusade, 147; defeated at Massoura 
148, 149; his second crusade 152; 
dies at Tunis, 153 ; see also (156, 
190) 

X. (Hutin) 183-185 

XI., 245, 246, 255, 256 ; impris 

oned at Peronne by Charles the 
Bold, 259; released, 260; his de- 
clining health, 265, 266 ; his death, 
267. "See also (268-270) 

Louis XII., marries first, Joan, 

daughter of St. Louis, 287 ; second- 
ly, Anne of Bretagne, 288; third- 
ly Mary of England, 292 ; his wars 
in Italy, 288, 291, 292 

XIII., 388, 398, (402, 403) 

XIV., 406 ; marries the infan- 
ta, 412; invades Holland, 414; and 
Franche Comte, 416 ; concludes 
the peace of Nimeguon, 417 ; re- 
news the war 427 ; revokes the 
edict of Nantes, 428, 429 ; acknowl 
edges James HI. of England, 435, 
his death 440 ; and see (423, 425 
426, 447, 450, 451) 

XV., 452 ; his marriage, 455 

and see (460, 401) 474 ; his statue. 
(478, 479) 

XVI., 483; his compulsory 

journey from Versailles to Paris, 
500 ; imprisoned in the Temple, 
503, 504 ; his trial and execution, 
507-509; and see (490-492, 494,512, 
517, 518) ; and Vartanes. 

XVII. (496, 517-521) 

XVin., 502, 554, 555; his resto- 
ration (see Bourbons) ; his flight 
from Paris in 1815, 557 ; his se- 
cond restoration, 553, 560 ; his 
death, 571 ; and see (540, 541) 568, 
570, 571 

Louis Philippe, 581-584; becomes 
a teacher in Switzerland ; his pover- 
ty ; visits America, 585 ; his per- 
sonal character, 586 ; two courses 
of policy before him ; adopts an 
arbitrary one ; carries on this exoe 



598 



INDEX. 



dition against Algiers; fortifies 
Paris, 587 ; the Spanish marriage, 
5 88 ; prohibits reform banquets, 
589 ; driven from France, 590 

Loais the German, son of Louis le 
Debonnaire, 43, 45 

— — , dauphin, son of Louis XIV., 
439 

-, duke of Burgundy, grandson 

of Louis XIV., 439, 440 (443, 444) 

Louisa of Savoy (293, 311, 312) 

Louvet, 232 

Louvois 413, 415, 429, 431 

Louvre (137, 189) 

Loyola (325) 

Luneville, peace of, 534 

Luxemburg, Marshal, 417 

Lyons aimexed to France, 177 ; be- 
sieged and taken by the troops of 
the Convention, 524 

Macaire. See Auhri. 

Magical incantations (1 87) 

Majestic. See Boat's crp.w. 

Maine, duke of, 453 

Mainfroi, 151 

Maintenon, Madame (425, 445-448, 

462) 
Maison de Dieu (189, 190) 

, Carree (16) 

Malta taken possession of by the 

French, 530 
Manfred. See Mainfroi. 
Manners and customs (122, 123, 182, 

382, 383) 
of the reign of Louis XVI., 

and of the revolution (541-544) 
Mantua, siege of, 529, 530 
Marboeuf (562, 563) 
Margaret of Flanders 196, 197 
queen of Navarre (337) 344, 



of Provence (157, 158) 
of Valois, 344, 345 (353, 



354) 

Maria Theresa 457-460 
Marie Antoinette, 433 (491-494) 509 

(511, 514, 515) 

Leczinski, 455, 473 

Louise, 549, 555 

Marlborough, duke of, 435-438 
Marmont 578, 581 

Marseilles, plague at, 455 (462, 463) 
Mary queen of Scots, 322 (369) 
of Medicis 341, 388-390 (402, 

405) 
Masks (387) 
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 346, 

348, (353, 354) 

■ of September, 1792, 404, 405 

Massoura, 148 (156) 
Matthioli (464-466) 



Maximilian, 265, 276, 279, 290 {293^ 

294) 299 
Mayenne, duke of, 342, 364, 365, 389 
Mayors of the palace (27) 
Mazarin, 406-412 
Medici. See Catheritie, Mary, anil 

Masks. 
Menou, 535 
Merovee, 15 
Mezerai (200) 
Minorca, 468 

Miseriae scholasticorum (213) 
Mississippi scheme, 454 
Money (167, 168) 
Monks of St. Genevieve (123) 
Monstrelet (254) 
Montecuculi. 416, 417 
Montespan, Madame de ^422, 423) 
Montford, John de, 196, 197 
Simon, 131 



Montgomeri (324, 325) . See Henry II 

Montluc (387) 

Montmorenci, constable, 319, 330, 331 

340, 343 
Montpensier, Mademoiselle (421-4ZJ) 
•, duke of, married to a 



Spanish princess, 588 
Moralities (284) 
Moreau, 533 
Mort-dome (27) 
Moscow burnt, 550, 551 

— , retreat from, 551, 552 



Mountain, the party so called, 506 

Munster, peace of, 407 

Murat, 554 ; his defeat and execution, 

559 
Muskets. See Fire-arms. 
Mysteries (284) 

Nantes, edict of, 377 
, its revocation, 42S- 



Naples, conquest of by Charles VXII^ 
278, 279 (282) 

Napoleon, 528, 529 ; embarks for 
Egypt, 530 ; returns to France, 
531 ; created first consul, 532 ; of 
fers peace, 533 ; gains the battle of 
Marengo, ib. ; created emperor, 
536 ; crowned king of Italy, ib. ; 
his greatest ascendency, 547 ; mar- 
ries Marie Louise, 549 ; his expe- 
dition to, and retreat from Russia, 
549-552 ; his resources after defeat, 
553, 554 ; declared to have forfeited 
the throne, 554 ; abdicates, ib. ; his 
return from Elba, 556 ; his second 
abdication, 558 ; surrender to the 
English, 559 ; his exile to and death 
in St. Helena, 560 ; his remains 
brouglit to France, ib. ; and see 
(543, 561-56^ and JoH'phim 



INDEX 



iW 



National Assembly, 497, 499, 502, 505, 

506 
Convention dedares war 

against Sardinia, England, and 
' Spain, 523 ; and see 527 
Necker, 484, 487, 489, 499, 501 
Nelson, admiral, 531, 546 
Newspapers (403) 

of 1814 (5C5) 

Ney, his trial and execution, 567 
Nobles exempted from taxation (198) 
Normandy, 104; conquered by Philip 

Augustus, 128 
Normans, 34, 42-45 (47, 48) 52-54 

, in Italy and Sicily (95, 96) 

Notables, convention of in 1787, 488 
Notre Dame (137, 144) 
Noyades, 525 

Ogier the Dane (484) 
Orange-ti-ee at Versailles (338) 
Oriflamme 103 (120) 
Orleans, siege of, and relief by Joan 

of Arc, 240, 241 
— ■— — , (duke of) taken prisoner at 

Agincourt, 231 ; restored to liberty, 

247 ; and see (248, 249) 
, (Gaston duke of, son of Henry 

IV.) 381, 397, 398 

-, Philip duke of, son of Louis 



XIII, 398, 412 

-, Philip duke of, the regent, 



452-455 (460) 

-, Philip Egalite 498, 508 510 ; 



and see (495, 496, 539) 
Osmond, 55 
Ostrogoths (18) 
Otho the Great, 55, 57 

II., 57, 58 

— — IV., 129, 130 

Paine, 505, 508 

Painted glass (183) 

Palais Royal (400) 

Palatinate ravaged, 416, 417, 431, 

432 
Paleologus, Constantine (253) 

, Michael (135) 

, Theodore (254) 

Panache (401) 

Pandolf, 129 

Pannonia, 32 

Paoli, 472, 527 

Pare (369) 

Paris founded by the Celts, 15 

— -. under the Romans, 15 

— — sacked and besieged by the 

Normans in 855, and 885, 51 
besieged by Henry III., 364 ; 

by Henry iV., 373 ; the siege raised 

374 ; taken in 1814, 554 (565, 566) 
described 103 (120, 121; 137, 138, 



144,145, 188-190,212-214, 165,403- 

405); fortifications of, under Louis 

PhiHppe, 587 
Paris, Parliament of, 489, 490 ; and lee 

University. 
Pansian society (541-544) 
Parliaments (39, 178, 179) 

, their powei depressed 



in the reign of Louis XV^ 473 ; and 

see Paris. 
Parvenus (548) 
Paul et Virginie (543) 
Peace of God. See Truce. 
of Vervins, 376 ; of Aix la 

Chapelle, 460; of 1783, 487; of 

Amiens, 535 ; of Presburg, 545; of 

Tilsit, 547; of 1814, 555 
Peaked shoes (100) 
Pedro in. (154) 161, 164 

the Cruel,- 217, 218 

Peers of France (68) 
Pepin d'Heristal, 24 
Pepin le Bref, 24, 29-31 (39) 

, son of Charlemagne, 34 

Pequigni, treaty of, 262 
Pescara 302, 303 
Pestilence (198, 199) 
Peter the Hermit, 89-01 
Peterborough, earl of (436) 
Petrarch (214, 215) 
Pharamond, 15 
Philip I., 88-94 

II. (Augustus), 66, (70) 118, 



117 ; his accession, 125 ; bis trans- 
actions with Henry II. of England, 
125, 126 ; joins in the crusade with 
Richard I. of England, 126 ; their 
dissensions, 125-127; conquersNor 
mandy, 128 ; his death, 132 

III. (the Bold), 153 ; his acces- 



sion and character, 159, 160 ; hia 

death, 164 
IV. (the Pair), 170 ; his wars 

in Flanders, 172, 173 ; his disputes 

with the Pope, 173, 174 ; his death 

177. See also (179, 180) 

v., 18.5, 186 

VI. (of Valois, the fortunate), 

187, 193; his war with England, 

193 ; defeated at Cressy, 194, 195 

his death, 196 

-II. of Spain, 321 ; makes wai 



on France, ib. ; ga"ins the battle of 
St. Quentin, ib. ; hia death, 3~6 
and see (329) 

IIL of Spain, 376 

IV., 413 

v., grandson of Louis XFV 



434, 437-439, 454, 459 

, Archduke, 289 

-, see Orleans, Duke oj 



PhUosopbers, 4? 4 (177) 



ffOO 



INDEX. 



Pichegrc, 523 
Pickpockets (352) 
Pierson, Major (143) 
Pig^nerol (421) 
Pilgrims' scrip (123) 
Place de Louis XV. (179) 
Plagae. See Marseilles. 
Plays (234, 235, 284) 
Poetiy (369, 370) 
Poggio Bracciolini (252) 
Poliguac, cardinal (449) 

, duchess of (510) 

, Prince Jules, 577 

Pompadour, madame de, 467, 468, 

471 (475, 476) 
Pont du Gard (116) 

Neuf (404) 

Popes, rise of their power, 33 (40) 

tiara (180) 

Posts (269) 

Pragmatic sanction, 457, 460 
Predial servitude (70) 
Prince of fools (284) 
Procession of the Fat Ox, 235 

of the Giant, ib. 

Provence (or Aries) ; kingdom of, 46 
Provenqal dialect (50) 

poets (108, 109) 

Pruilly. See Geoffry. 

Prussia and Sweden and afterward 

Austria, declare war against Prance 

in 1813, 553 
PjTamids. See Battles. 
Pyrenees, treaty of, 411-413 

Q,UATS on the Seine (144) 
CLuiberon, 527 

K-AINULF, 52 

Ransom of Louis IX. (166, 167) 

Raoul (or Rodolph), 54 

Ravaillac, 380 

Ravenna granted to the Pope, 30, 32 

Raymond of Toulouse, 91, 131 

Reason, goddess of, 525 

Reform banquets, 589 

Register-office (403) 

Regnier of Anion, 268 

Republic of 1848, 559 
Retainers. See Lackeys. 

Retz, Cardinal, 408, 410 

Revolution of 1789 (496) ; and see 
France. • 

of 1830, 578-581 

Richard L of England, 116, 126, 127 

IL of England, 219, 230 

— (the Fearless) duke of Nor- 
mandy, 55, 56, 67 

II. and III., dukes of Nor- 



Richelieu, Marshal 468 

duke of, 566, 568, 5«» 



Rings, or ringes, 32, 33 

Robert the Pious, 72, 75 (76-78) 

, duke of Normandy, 75, 76, fld, 



81 



-, of Frizeland, 88 



mandy, 75 
Rj-chelieu, cardinal, 391, 397; his 
death, 39P and see (339-401) 



Robespierre, 506, 526 (537, M8) 

Rochelle, siege of, 348, 393-;iJ6 

Rodney, 486 

Rodolph. See Raoul 

Rjland, 32 

RoUo, 53, 54, (59) 

Roman Empire, its decline (17, IS), 

families in Gaul (19) ; remaina in 

Gaul (16, 17) 
Romance of the Rose (165, 384) 
Romances (165) 
Romanesque language (26, 49) 
Rome taken by the French 306, 307 

, king of, his birth, 549, 555 

Roncevalles 32 (38) 

Ronsard (369) 

Roofs of houses (313, 314) 

Rouen, siege and capture of, in the 

reign of Charles IX., 340, 341 
Rousseau 474, 475, 488 
Rubens (405) 
Ruffs (361) 
Ryswick, peace of, 433 

St. Bernard (120) 

— Cyr (462) 

— Pol, 261, 262 

— Simon (421) 
Saladin, 126, 127 (133) 
Salic law (27, 28) 
Salt-cellar (85) 

Sancy diamond (271, 272) 
Saracens, 24 ; defeated by Chsirle 

Martel, ib. 
Saxe, Marechal, 459 
Saxony, elector of, made king, 547 
Scarlet dye (338) 
Schism in the church (250, 25,1) 
Schools in the 16th century (370) 
Schwartzenburg, 553 
Segur, Abbe (107, 111, 112, 115) 

, Count (481, 542) 

Seine fl44) 

Seneschals and baillies (166) 

Serfs (98, 154, 155) 

Seven years' war, 467, 468 

Sforza, Ludovico, 276-280 

Shepherd's Calendar (384) 

Ships. See La Grande Franfosat 

Sicilian vespers, 162 

Siege of Acre, 126 

in 17D8, 531 



Avignon 140, 141 



Sifeyes, 528 
Sigismond (250-25S) 



INDEX. 



601 



Silver book (27) 
Simon. See Monfford. 
Single combats (327) 
Slaves in agriculture (19) 

, domestic {ib.) 

Sluggard kings, 23, 24 

Smith, Sir Sidney, 531, 534 

Smolensk taken by the French, 549 

Snuff (270) 

Soissons, count of, 396, 397 

Soldiers' pay, and habits of plunder 

(366, 367) 
Sorbonne (400) 
Spain, war of the succession^ 433- 

439 ; invaded by Napoleon, 548 ; 

in the reign of Louis XVIII., 570 
Stanislaus, king of Poland, 445, 456 ; 

his death, 473 
States -general, 178 (179) 488-490, 497 
Stephen III., pope, 30 

de Blois, 91 

Sully (366) 377-380 (381-383, 402) 

, his memoirs (370) 

Sumptuary laws (181) 

Superstition (386) 

Surgery (368, 369) 

Suwarrow 532, 533 

Sweden. See Prussia. 

Swiss guards massacred in 1792, 503, 

504 
Sj'lvester II. See Gerbert. 

Talleykand, 566 (571, 572) 

Tassilon, 32, 33 

Tasso's ' Jerusalem Delivered' (98) 

Taxation. See Gabelle and Nobles. 

Templers, their suppression, 175, 176 

Temple, prison of the (516-522) 

Tenth century, changes in (60, 611 

Teroaenne, 291 

Terror, reign of, 526 

Theodebert, 25 

Theodore Lascaris (134) 

Theodoric, 22, 23 

Thibaud, earl of Champagne, after- 
ward king of Navarre 152 (155), 
159, 160, 164 

Thierri I. See Tlieodoric. 

II., 25 

III., ib. 

IV., ib. 

Tilting (327) 

Tortures (106) 

Toulon (424) ; given up to English, 524 

Tournaments (99, 100) 

Toumay, 292 

Tourville, Adnriral, 432 

Trent, council of, '333 

Treves. See Franks 
Cc 



Trianon (492, 493) 

Troubadoui-s and ti-ouveres (108, 109 

164, 165) 
Truce of God (86) 
Truches (154) 
Tudesque (26) 
Tuileries (189, 336) 
Turenne 407, 410-413, 415-417 
Turks, their conquests in the East, 

89 
Turpin's Chronicle (38) 
Tyrol, revolt of the, 450 

Valentijta, duchess of Orleans, 229 
Valois, Charles of, 163, 164, 171, 172, 
175, 184, 186, 187 

, Philip of, 193, 194 

, house of its succession to the 



throne, 187, 193, 364, 365 
Varennes, Louis XVI.'s flight to (513- 

515) 
Vassalage (69, 7C) 
Velly (200) 

Vendee war and massacre, 524, 527 
Verdun. See Detenus. 
Verona, congress of, 569 
Versailles (425) 
Villars, Marshal, 437, 438, 456 
Villebon (382, 383) 
Villele, 569 
Villeroy, Marshal, 432 
Vincennes (190) 
Visigoths, 15, 16, (18) 21 
Vitry, 382 
UlphUas (21) 

Ulm, surrender of in 1803, 54S 
Uniforms (368) 
University of Paris (37, 214) 
Voltaire, 475 
Voters, limited number, under tha 

Constitution of 1830, 586 
Urban 11., pope, 89 
Utrecht, peace of, 438, 439, 
Vulgar era, 35 

Wallon language (108) 

Water-clock (40, 41) 

Watte au (478) 

Wax taper in N6tre Dame (212) 

Wellington, 554, 557, 558 

Wigs (449) 

William the Conqueror, 81, 93 

prince of Orange, afterward 



William III. of England, 417, 418i, 

431, 434, 435 

of Poitiers, 92 (109) 

Wolves (48) 245 (249) 
Wurtemberg, duke of, id ado king r>f 

Napoleon 545 



QUESTIONS 

FOR THE EXAMINATION OF PUPILS. 



CHAPTER I. 

(P. ll). What are the natural boundaries of France? What is said of 
its climate ? (P. 14). What of its inhabitants ? How was France formerly 
divided ? How is it divided now ? When was the change made ? Why 
was it made 1 From whom do we have the earliest knowledge of France 1 
What was France then called? (P. 15). On what rivers did the Franka 
originate ? Were they friends or enemies of the Romans ? Where did 
they establish their capital ? To what river did Childeric extend the ter- 
ritories of tjie Franks ? Describe the course of tlie Loire. What was the 
name of the city of Paris in Caesar's time ? Of what did it then consist ? 
(P. 16). To what part of the country were the Romans at last confined? 
What important province was situated there ? Into how many states was 
Gaul thus divided in those days 1 Who at length became its sole masters ? 
When was the Roman power in Armorica finally extinguished ? By 
whom ? WTien was Christianity introduced into France ? 

Conversation on Chapter I. 
What is said of the antiquities at Nismes ? (P. 17). Of those on tne 
banks of the RhonB ? Describe the amphitheater of earth in Normandy. 
What is Cisalpine Gaul? What does the word Cisalpine mean? What 
were the causes of the overthrow of the Roman Empire? (P. 18). What 
is the word Goth derived from ? What character are the Franks said to 
have possessed? What weapons did they use ? (P. 19). To what degree 
did slavery exist among the Franks ? Describe Roman life in Gaul. (P. 20). 
What was the religion of the Gauls ? 

CHAPTER II. 

What were the circumstances of Clevis's conversion to Christianity? 
(P. 21). What was the capital city of Clovis ? With what nation did he 
make war ? What was their capital city ? What was Clovis's pretext 
for saying that lie had the authority of God for undertaking the war? 
What incident took place at the river Vienne ? What was the result of 
the campaign against the Visigoths? (P. 22). How long did Clovis reign? 
How many sons did he leave ? Which of them at last became sole mon- 
arch of France ? What was thfe character of Clothaire ? How long did he 
reign ? (P. 23). In what year did Dagobert I. begin to reign ? What was 
his character ? Whatwas the condition of France during his reign? What 
waa the character of his immediate successors ? (P. 24). What have those 
Buccessors been called ? What was the office of Pepin d'Heristal ? Who 
succeeded him ? What great enemy had Charles Martel from the south 7 
How far did they advance ? When did Charles Martel become nominally 
king ? What was the name of the d3maBty thus terminated ? (P. 2S) 
What was the origin of the name of the province of Bretagne ? 

Conversation on Chapter II. 

(P. 2£). What information is niven about the histories of France? Give 

an ajcount of the formation of the French language ? (P. 27). In what state 

was the Latin language preserved at Rome ? What is the Silver Book ? 

O^n vou givd t^«s "vigin of the word mayor? (P. 28). What important 



604 QUESTIONS. 

provision of the Salic law is here mentioned? How tas this resahed ia 
the succession to the throne of France ? 

CHAPTEK, III. 

(P. 30j. What ceremony did King Pepin introduce at his coronation 1 
What is said of the phial ? "What war broke out in Italy at this time T 
How was King Pepin drawn into this war? What was the result of his 
intei-position ? (P. 31). When did Pepin die ? Who succeeded him ?_ Did 
they agree? How was the dispute terminated? By what name is the 
Charles whose reign then commenced generally known? Whtt is said 
of the importance of his reign? What was Charlemagne's character? 
Describe his person ? What was his iirst militai-y enterprise ? Was it 
successful? (P. 32). Where was Charlemagne crowned iu Italy? Did 
he subdue the whole of Italy ? What was the exception ? Describe his 
expedition into Spain. Wliat took place on his return ? Who was Tassi 
Ion? Where is Bavaria? What were the Ringes ? What event took 
place in 799 ? What was the consequence of the interview between Leo 
and Charlemagne? What plan did Charlemagne form for adding the 
Eastern Empire to his own ? Did his plan succeed ? (P. 34). What took 
place between Charlemagne and the Normans ? How did he divide his 
kingdom between his sons ? Describe the circumstances of his sickness 
and death. (P. 35). Describe the burial of Charlemagne. What was the 
extent of his dominions at his death ? What change took place during bis 
life, in respect to the mode of reckoning dates ? 

Conversation on Chapter III. 
(P. 36). How does Charlemagne compare with Alfred? What is said 
of his industry? (P. 37). Describe his dress. What was his dispositior 
toward reading ? What is said of his attempts to learn to write ? _ Why 
was he not taught when young ? How was he disposed toward his chil- 
dren ? (P. 38). What is said of the Roncevalles light ? What is the origin 
of Charles's name Martel? (P. 39). What does href, Pepin's name mean? 
Relate the anecdote of Pepin's prowess. Wliat public meetings are here 
mentioned? (P. 40). WTiat account is given of the origin of the pope's 
power ? WTiat was now the state of learning in Arabia ? (P. 41). Da 
scribe the water-clock. Describe the iron crown of Lombardy. 

CHAPTER rV. 

(P. 42). Wbo succeeded Charlemagne ? Was Louis popular among hi» 
subjects? W"hat was his real character? (P. 43). How did the quarrel 
between Louis and his sons arise ? How long did it continue ? When 
did Louis die ? What took place in Spain during the difficulties between 
Louis and his sons? (P. 44). WTiat is said of the battle of Fontenay? 
Who was the victor? How was the quarrel settled? WTiat part of tho 
empire was assigned to Lothaire ? What did Louis receive ? WTiat was 
done with the rest ? What were the Normans now doing ? WTiat w^as their 
object in their contest with France ? (P. 45). What establishments did the 
Normans particularly attack ? Why ? What measures did Charles take to 
free the country from these Normans ? Was he successful ? What was 
the character of Lothaire ? What became of his kingdom after his death ? 
(P. 46). Describe the circumstances of the death of Charles the B aid. Who 
inherited his dominions ? How long did Louis II. reign ? How was the 
empire of Charlemagne united ? 

Conversation on Chapter IV. 
(P. 47). Were the Normans and Danes the same ? Why did not Franco 
defend herself? (P. 49). What is said of the scribes ? "What language 
was used in Uie court of Charlemagne ? How were several languages liera 
mentioned, nnnied? (P. 50). What is said of the subseqvent prosperity of 
the three divisions of Charlemagne's empire ? 



QUESTIONS. bOi 



CHAPTER V. 

(1'. 51). What was th'5 general character of Cnailes the Fat? Whai 
Was the exteut of Paris, at the time here spoken of? What was done to 
defend it against the Normans ? Who was the jirominent person in con- 
ducting the defense ? (P. 52). What did Charles do to release Paris from 
the attack of the Normans ? Describe the close of his life. Were the 
possessions of (Charles divided after his death, or did they descend as one 
kingdom to his successor ? Who received the German and Italian domin- 
ions of Charles the F at ? Why did he not also receive the crown of Fra-ace ? 
Who was chosen king of France ? How much of France did he receive 7 
What was the state of that part which Eudes possessed? Did the Nor- 
mans continue to plunder France ? Who checked them ? Where did they 
go next'? Who checked them there? (P. 53). What took place in the 
kingdom of Eudes during his absence? Was Charles the Siraple able to 
take an active part in governing his kingdom? Why not? W"hat agree- 
ment did Charles and Eudes finally make? When and how did Charles 
receive all the ten-itoi-y of Fraflce ? WTiat agreement did he make with 
Bollo? Describe the results of his measures. (P. 54). What sort of a 
ruler did Rollo prove to be ? What wise measures of his are spoken of? 
Who succeeded him ? Was Charles as prudent and successfiil as Rollo T 
Who attempted to become king in his place ? What became of this Rob- 
ert? What was the conduct of his son Hugh with respect to the crown? 
What was the result of the struggle between Charles and Rodolph? During 
the reign of Rodolph who managed the goveniment ? After the death of Ro- 
dolph what persons did Hugh send for? Where were they? How was it 
that they resided in England ? Did they return to France ? (P. 55). What 
was the character of Louis the Stranger? How did the civil war arise, 
between Louis and Hugh? What part in it did William Longsword and 
Arnulf take? Wliat became of William Longsword? To what danger 
was his son Richard exposed ? Describe his rescue. (P. 56). Who took 
Louis prisoner? On what condition did he release him? What became 
of Richard? What is said of his character and personal appeai-ance? Give 
the story about the stone coffin. What caused the death of Louis ? What 
sons did he leave ? What was done with his kingdom ? Why was it not 
divided ? What important change in the manner of transferring the crown 
from father to son was now made ? What is said of the early part of the 
reign of Louis ? What does the word tutelage mean? (P. 58). Describe 
the attack which Lothaire made upon Otho 11. Describe the retaliation of 
Otho. What did he do by way cf bravado ? What were the circumstances 
ander which Lothaire attacked him ? What was the result of the battle ? 
(P. 57). What proposal did Otho make ? Was his plan a common way of 
settling disputes in those days? Was it adopted in this case, or not? 
Who opposed it ? How was the quarrel settled ? Mention the facts stated 
respecting Louis V. What is said of Charles, Duke of Lorraine 1 What ii 
caid of the Carlovingian kings as a race ? 

Conversation on Chapter V. 

Why did not Hugh the Fair take the ci-own of France as his own? 
Wliat is said of his mamage and wives? (P. 5D). What were his sur- 
•lames ? What is said here of the Normans ? What of Rollo in particu- 
lar ? Give the story about the ceremony of kissing the king's foot. 
(P. 60). Wliat is said of the custom of dueling? How were persons of the 
same Christian name distinguished in those days ? Why was Conrade 
called the Pacific? Describe the state of society in those days. (P. 61) 
How was trade conducted at that time ? How were the contests among 
the various warriors generally r.arried on ? Describe the Chateau GaUlanL 
What does this name mean ? Who laid s?ege to it ? \Miat was tha 
cause of its suri-ender? 



bfle QUESTIONS 



CHAPTER VI. 

(P. ti4). What term is applied to the character of Hugh Capet? /Wha! 
reason did he give for refusing to be crowned as king ? (P. 65). What is 
mentioned as the excuse of the French for rejectuig Charles, Duke of Lor- 
raine ? AVhat course did he take with reference to Hugh Capet? Did he 
employ amis or artifice in his attempt to gain the throne ? How did he 
gain possession of Laon? Describe the fraud of Arnolf. (P. 66). How 
did Hugh succeed in his siege ? Give the substance of his letter to the 
Bishop of Treves. How did he finally get possession of Laon? What 
became of Charles and Arnolf? What diflSculties did Hugh find in gov- 
erning his kingdom ? (P. 67). Name the eight principalities of that time. 
Who succeeded Hugh Capet? What has the tenth century been called ? 
Why? 

Conversation on Chapter VL 
What do historians say was the origin of the name Capet ? What la 
said of the degi*ees of raik? On what principle were the degrees regu- 
lated ? What are fiefs ? What are vassals ? What are peers ? Into 
what two classes were the peers of France divided ? Name the lay peers 
The ecclesiastical peers. Describe the ceremony of doing homage. WTiat 
oaths were taken? (P. 70). What is said of Gebert, Hugh's secretary? 
"Wliat did Sismondi compare him to? WTiat is said of his boyhood? 
Why did he go to Spain ? How was he received on his return to France ? 
(P. 71). Who gave him the office of secretary? Why did he leave Hugh 
Capet ? What position did he at last attain? What efiect did the plague 
which visited France duiing the tenth century have npon the warlike 
habits of its nobles ? 

CHAPTEll VII. 

(P. 72). At what age did Robert the Pious ascend the throne ? What 
was his personal appearance ? What was the character of his mind ? 
(P. 73). What was the nature of the difficulty respecting Robert's marriage ? 
What measures were taken to oblige Robert to obey the Catholic law ? 
What was the final result? WTio was the second wife of Robert? 
Describe her conduct and occupations. How did Robert employ himself? 
How was the intelligence from Palestine received in Europe? Whv 
were the Jews persecuted ? What advice did Sylvester II. give ? Wha' 
was the cause of the quarrel between Robert and Otho William ? What 
Btory is told of the first battle ? What was the final result ? How many 
children did Robert leave ? Who succeeded him ? Why was the third 
Bon chosen ? Give an account of the quarrel and reconciliation between 
Richard III. and Robert. 

Conversation on Chapter VII. 
(P. 76). What is faither said of the character and habits of Robert? 
Give the story of the beggar. (P. 77). Relate the story of the thief at 
mass. What is the next anecdote illustrating his liberality ? Relate the 
two anecdotes of the king's music. (P. 78). WTiat was the theory with 
regard to the end of the world at that time ? What effect did 't have 1 
(P. 79). What prevented a famine temporarily? 

CHAPTER VIIL 

(P. 80). Did Henry meet with any opposition in mounting his fathers 
•trone ? Whose protection did he seek ? Was Henry or Constance vic- 
torious? How did Henry satisfy his brother? (P. 81). What plan did 
Robert of Normandy form to atone for the murder of his brother? WTiaf 
Were liis wishes respecting his son ? What difficulty did he foresee ? la 
^hose care did he place his son ? Were the claims of his son opposed i 



QUESTIONS. tiOf 

By whom? "What was the relationship between Manger and jroung 
William? (See p. 75). What success did his opposition meet withi 
What character did William exhibit ? Where did he afterward distinguisfa 
himself? What is said of the close of Henry's life ? (P. 82). What was 
the state of the Chm-ch at this time ? What is said of Benedict IX. 1 
What is said of Leo IX.? What important act of his is here mentioned ? 
What is meant by simony ? 

Conversation on Chapter VIII. 

(P. 83). What is said of the institution of chivalry? What is the common 
opinion as to its origin ? Describe the ceremonies of knighting a noble- 
man. (P. 54). What were the essential points in the education of boys at 
that time ? What is said of their domestic duties ? (P. 85). How did the 
spirit of chivalry affect the lower classes of people ? (P. 86). What were 
the regulations in regard to fighting? (P. 87). Was the science of geogra- 
phy much known at this time ? What does the canon of Bremen say of 
Sweden and Norway ? How does he describe the inhabitants of Russia ? 

CHAPTER IX. 

(P. 88). Who was the guai-dian of Philip I. ? Under what circumstanceai 
did he begin to reign ? What character did he exhibit ? Whom did he at- 
tack in Flanders ? (P. 89). How did Philip close his quarrel with Robert? 
What is said of his man-iage ? What nation, at this time, began to rouse 
the fears of Europe ? How did Alexis Comnenus feel and act ? What did 
Urban II. do ? What is said of Peter the Hermit ? What was the condi- 
tion of France during the preparations for the crusade ? What division of 
the crusaders was made ? Describe the march of the first division. 
(P. 91). How wei'e they treated by the nations through whose possessions 
they passed ? Why was the other part of these crusaders divided ? Name 
as many of the commanders as you can. (P. 92). How did Alexis receive 
(.hem, when they reached Constantinople ? What was the result of their 
expedition to Jerusalem? Who commanded the second expedition ? What 
became of it? (P. 93). What was the state of things in France at this 
t)eriod ? Who had possession of Normandy ? Wlio defended the territories 
of France against his incursions? What other enemies did Louis have to 
contend against, after the death of William Rufus ? What was the state 
■of feeling between Louis and Bei-trade? What was the character of Louis? 
Was he popular? (P. 94). What desire did Philip express in reference to 
his burial ? Describe the coin that he introduced. What was the extent 
of the sovereignty of France at that time ? 

Conversation on Chapter IX. 
(P. 95). Give as much information as you can about the division of France 
after the death of Philip. What parts of France have been possessed by 
the King of England ? Recount the circumstances which led to the founda- 
tion of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. (P. 96). What was the character 
of Robert Guiscard ? What was that of Boemond ? What stratagem did 
he employ for returning from Antioch to Sicily? (P. 97). What anecdotes 
are given of the insolent conduct of the crusaders ? (P. 98). Why were 
coats of arms and family surnames assumed by the nobility ? (P. 99). What 
is said of the invention of the tournament ? — of its laws ? — of the weapons 
used ? (P. 100). Were the expenses of the tournament great ? Desciiba 
the cm-ious shoes worn at this time. 

CHAPTER X. 

(P. 102). What expedient had the lords around Paris resorted to for iLe 
Bake of gaining wealth? What course did Louis take with regard to those 
robbers ? Wh^t foreign enemy did Louis attack ? Which of the two kings 
-proved the conqueror ? Who arranged a peace between them ? Was this 
peace permanent? (P. 103) Was Lcais able to defend himself ag^aiusl 



608 QUESTIONS. 

the King of England and tht Emperor of Germany? To what nietns did 
he resort to gain assistance 1 What was the result ? Describe the cir- 
cumstances of the death of the son of Bonis. How did this affect Louis ? 
(P. 104). How was Stephen received by the Normans ? 'Why f'id they dis- 
like Geoffry ? Which party did the Duke of Aquitaine join 1 What was 
his conduct ? How did his cruelty afterward appear to him ? What did 
he do to relieve his conscience ? How did he provide for his family ? 
(P. 105). How did Louis secure the good-will of the meixhants and towns 
people ? Describe the communes ? What were the effects of the king's 
management? 

Conversation on Chapter X. 

(P. 106). Was Louis specially interested in the cultivation of leaniine J 
What cause tended to increase the general love for learning ? (P. 107). 
What two men are mentioned as eminent for scholarship, at this period 1 
What is said of the Abb6 Segur ? What of Abelard ? To what sort of 
literature were the nobles dovoted? Describe the troubadours. (P. 109). 
What is said of the language of Provence? How is the poetry of the 
troubadours described ? What were the trouveres ? How did they differ 
from the troubadours ? What is the meaning of their name ? How are 
the courts for the trial of wit described ? 



CHAPTEB, XL 

(P. 110). What was the general character of Louis VII.? What is said 
of his early life? (P. 111). What two enemies did Louis VII. make? 
What induced him to make peace with Thibaud ? What was the intelli- 

fence which put a stop to the quarrels in Normandy and the south of 
'ranee? (P. 112). How did the people feel towai'd the new crusade? 
What was the opmion of Segur ? Why did Louis choose to travel by land 
instead of by sea ? (P. 113). How were the French received at Constanti- 
tiople ? To what place did they next proceed ? What question arose 
about the road ? Which route did Louis take ? (P. 114). How long did he 
pursue it? Give an account of the battle mentioned, and of his subsequent 
difficulties. What led the remainder of the army to select Gilbert as their 
leader? (P. 115). When Louis had reached Satalia, how did he decide to 
proceed ? What became of the soldiers ? Give an account of the remain- 
der of this expedition. How was Louis received in France on his return ? 
What changes in disposition did he manifest ? (P. 116). After Eleanor 
was divorced from Louis, whom did she marry? What were the posses- 
sions of Henry Plantagenet ? W^hat were the feelings of Louis toward 
nim? How long did the wars between these two last? What part did 
Louis take in the war between Henry and his sons ? What artifice did he 
make use of in order to gain possession of Vemeuil ? (P. 118). How did he 
attempt to take Rouen? (P. 119). What statements are made with refer- 
ence to the coronation of Philip? How did he treat his mother? Who 
was his chief coins elor? (P. 119). What was the last act of Louis ? 

Conversation on Chapter XI. 

What is said of tho Albigenses ? How did the pope proceed against 
them? (P. 120). How were the Jews treated? What was the story of 
the oriflamme? (P. 121). What was the story of St. Martin's banner" 
What is said of the condition of Paris ? Of its extent ? Of its govern- 
ment? (P. 122). What was now the state of affairs in Italy? What 
names were given to the two parties in the controversy there 7 Give the 
origin of these names. Describe the combat between the two blind men 
and the pig. Describe that between the attendants of th^ pope and tho 
monks of St. Genevieve. How did it end ? (P. 124). Give an account of the 
Child'* Crusade. What was the end of it? 



QUESTIONS. S09 



CHAPTER XII. 

{f "^iS). What is said of the government of Philip Augustus T What 
.Jiis \«is character? What was his principal motive of action? What 
-aosej of difficulty arose between Henry and Philip ? (P. 126). Where did 
Ihey :x)nimonly hold their conferences '! What did Philip do to this elm ? 
For what rgason did he exhibit great friendship with Prince Richard? 
What plan for a crusade did they form ? What broke up their entei-prise ? 
What did they do in the spring? Was the unpleasant feeling betweec 
the two kings strengthened or' diminished at Acre ? How did they act 
there? (P. 127). What caused Philip to return to Europe? What oath 
did he first take ? Why did he stop in Rome ? How did Richard's success 
affect him ? W^hat course did he take on hearing of Richard's imprison- 
ment ? Was he successful in his plans ? After the release of Richard, 
what was the state of things between the two kings? (P. 128). What is 
said of the two marriages which Philip contracted ? After the death of 
Richard of England, who took possession of his dominions ? What became 
of Arthur of Bi-etagne? How did Philip obtain possession of Normandy? 
(P. 129). Who encouraged him to invade England ? How was he resti-ain- 
ed ? What territory did he invade ? What recalled him from Flanders ? 
What confederacy was foi-med against him ? Where did the first important 
battle take place ? Give as full an account of this battle as you can. 
(P. 131). What was the state of the war with the Albigenses at this time ? 
VVho conducted the persecutions ? How came Prince Louis to invade En- 
gland ? What did his father say to it ? How came the English to declare 
against him? (P. 132). Describe the plan, success, and final result of the 
fifth crusade. What were Philip's feelings in regard to his wealth ? 
What did he do ? What new military an-angements did Philip introduce 
'ito France ? 

Conversation on Chapter XII. 
(P. 133). Was crusading particularly attractive to the French people? 
Who founded the four principalities in the East, here mentioned? What 
is said of Saladin ? After Richard returned, how did the crusaders prosper ? 
To what city did they next turn their steps? How was Constantinople 
situated ? Who became masters of Constantinople ? About how long did 
the empire of Constantinople remain to them ? What is said of the closing 
years of Baldwin II.? (P. 135). Give the anecdote of the return of the 
pretended Baldwin. (P. 136). After his death, how was Jane regarded by 
the people ? W hat measures did she take to free herself from the odium 
which she had iiicun-ed ? (P. 137). How was Philip Augustus regarded by 
the people ? WTiat did he do for Paris ? Give an account of the pavement ; 
of the wall; of the Louvre; of the remaining improvements. {P. 13t). 
What is said of tihe progress of learning in these days ? What were Phi! 
in's own tastes ? What is said of the I'omances of that day? 

CHAPTER XIIL 

(P. 139). What circumstance led Philip to omit crowning his son befoio 
his death? What was the character of 'Louis VIII.? (P. 140). Describe 
his coronation. Did Henry of England attend it? Give an account of the 
desertion of Savaiy in the following war. What war did Philip enter into 
next? (P. 141). Describe the siege of Avignon. What were the circum 
stances of the king's death ? 

Conversation on Chapter XIII, 
(P. 142). Describe Jersey. What is said of Guernsey? Of Sark and 
Alderney ? What is the language of these islands? I)o they most re- 
semble the French or English? (P. 143). What was the success of. tha 
first expedition of the French against Jersey? Describe the second 
<P. 144.) ^Vhat account is here given of Paris, at the present day? How 

C C* 



Alt QUESTIONS. 

do the Seine and '.he Thames compare ? What is said r," the buildiig* ai 
Paris'? Of Notre Dame? 

CHAPTER XIV. 

(P. 146). What was the character of Q,neen Blancli? What was hej 
cor .duct during lier son's minority ? Wliat is said of the character of Louis 
IX.? (P. 147). What course did he take in reference to the crusades? 
What was the advice of his mother and counselors on this subject ? Whoia 
did he leave as regent on his departure 1 How did he gain possession of 
Damietta? (P. 148). How was his march, after leaving Damietta, ob- 
structed? How did the inhabitants of MassoaVa defend themselves? How 
was his army now situated ? Do you know what the Greek fire that the Turks 
used was ? (P. 149). Wliat caused the death of Blanch? On what terms 
did Louis at last escape from captivity ? What is the instance given here 
of his honorable conduct? How long did he remain in Palestine ? What 
did he do there? (P. 150). When he reached France, how was he receiv- 
ed ? Did he show any intention of going again to Palestine ? How was 
it manifested? What is said of his government of France ? What is said 
of his justice ? How was it exhibited ? Was the character of Charles of 
Anjou like that of Louis ? (P. 151). Describe his conquest of the Two Sici 
lies. Helate the circumstances attendant upon the death of Conradin. Dur- 
ing these conquests of'Charles, how was Louis engaged? What was tbe 
substance of the treaty between Louis and the king of Arragon? (P. 152). 
What exchange of territory did Louis and Hemy III. of England make ? 
What advice did he give to Henry in his diflScultieS with the barons? 
What did he say to the barons ? Was his advice followed ? What is said 
of the embarkation and voyage of the nest crusade ? Where did the king 
die ? Of what disease ? (P. 153). What is said of the arrival of Charles 
of Anjou ? 

Conversation on Chapter XIV. 
(P. 154). What became of the glove of Conradin ? What became of the 
earl of Flanders ? Under what circumstances did Blanch interfere between 
the canons of Notre Dame ? What are canons ? Wliat did these canons 
do? (P. 155). How did the queen then proceed? Give as fuU an account 
of Lord Joinville as you can ? (P. 156). What account does he give of 
Geofirey de Sergine's defense of the king? (P. 157). Describe his capture 
by the Saracens. How was his life preserved? (P. 158). What is said of 
the king's piety ? Why did Lord Joinville decline accompanying Louis on 
hissecond expedition ? 

CHAPTEU XV. 

(P. 159). Under what circumstances did Philip III. commence his reign? 
How did he close the war with the king of Tunis ? What was the sub 
stance of the treaty? Where, and from what cause did his queen die ? 
(P. 159). WTiat deaths followed hers ? What was the character of Philip ? 
How came he to be called the Bold? What was the diflSculty between 
Maria and Pierre de la Brosse? (P. 161). W^hat was the state of affairs 
iu Spain at this time ? What part did King Philip take ? What is the 
story of the sealed packet? What is said of the prosperity of Charles of 
Anjou? What conspiracy was formed? (P. 162). How is the massaci'e 
described? WTio was spared ? Why? What did Charles do on hearing 
of this ? Wliat agreement was formed between Charles and Pedro ? 
(P. 163). Did Pedro perform his part? What course did the popi3 and the 
king of France take, in consequence of Pedro's conduct? What was the 
result of the battle between De Lauria and Charles the Lame? What 
were the circumstances of the death of Charles of Anjou ? What was 
Philip's object in his expedition to Spain ? (P. 1G4). What was the result ? 
How was it that the crown of France obtained possession of the territiiriei 
ftf the counts of Toulouse ? 



QUESTIONS. tU 

Conversation on Chapter XV. 

!P. 165). Wnat is said of the troubadours? Of the Romance of the K-oael 
What is said of the habits of reading then prevalent ? (P. 166). What wera 
seneschals and baillies ? (P. 167). Repeat the information giver< about the 
French coinage. Describe the manner of using the Greek fire. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

(P. 170). What was the character of Philip IV. ? What was that of his 
wife ? What was that of his minvsters ? Wliat affairs occupied Philip 
(juiing the early part of his reign ? (P. 171). What course did Edward 1. 
take 1 Were his attempts to secure peace successful ? How did the war 
between France and England originate ? What steps did the two monarchs- 
take ? What enterprise occupied Edward's attention at that time ? What 
plan was Philip interested in? Who had possession of Flanders at that 
time ? How did Guy propose to strengthen his power ? How did Philip 
frustrate his plan? (P. 172). What league was formed against Philip? 
Was it a permanent one ? How was the war in Flanders conducted? By 
v^hat means did Philip get Guy Dampierre into his hands ? How did he 
govern Flanders ? What was the result of the first battle here mentioned ? 
Of the second? What did the Flemings demand of king Philip? Did ho 
give them peace ? What was now the state of feeling between Philip and 
the pope? (P. 174). What was the commencement of their quan-el? Unde? 
what circumstances was the pope taken prisoner ? How was he rescued ' 
(P. 175). What accident happened at the coronation of Clement V.? What 
was the origin of the order of Knights Templars? (P. 176). WTiy did 
Philip wish to destroy them ? By what pretense did he get them into his 
power ? How were they ti-ied ? How were they executed ? (P. 177). To 
what unwise plan did Philip resort, for raising money ? WTiat advice did 
he give his son Louis ? How many sons did he leave ? How many of them 
reigned ? (P. 178). Did Philip during his life favor the nobles or the middle 
classes ? What important change did he make, in the meetings of the 
States-General? 

Conversation on Chapter XVI. 
Wliy should not the States-General be called parliaments ? What is satd 
of the general assembly ? (P. 179). Who first convened the States-General ? 
Of what classes were they composed ? Describe the parliament. (P. 180). 
By what terms is the distinction between the two classes of the nobility 
now kept up ? Describe the tiara. How were the females of this period 
dressed? (P. 181). How did the nobles dress? How did the common 
people ? What laws respecting dress were passed ? What doen sumpt- 
uary mean ? What laws were enacted with reference to food ? Were 
these sumptuary laws? (P. 182). How did the houses of the English and 
French compare ? What curious custom is here spoken of ? Wht-t is said 
o<" the crusades ? 

CHAPTER XVII. 

(P. 163). Name the three kings whose lives are givtn in this chapter? 
Were their reigns long? What does Hutin mean? (P. 184). Who was 
the chief manager of affairs, under Louis X. How did Charles of Valois act 
toward Marigny ? Did he afterward repent ? What new method did Louia 
jesort to for raising money ? For what pui-pose in particular did Louia 
wish money ? WTiat difficulties did he meet w^ith in the siege of Courtray t 
(P. 185). What were the circumstances of the death of Louis ? What waa 
its probable cause? How long had he reigned? Wlio succeeded him? 
Why was not his daughter Jane his successor? What was the character 
of Philip's reign? What example is given of nis efforts to bfnefit hia 
kingdom ? (P. 186). Who succeeded Philip V. How did Charles tV. treat 
tiui natives olLombardy ? What was the state of Enjland daring 1 is reign * 



5ll£ QUESTIONS. 

Wlio was monarch there? "What was Isabella's plan' What was tne 
state of Flanders t (P. 187). What is said of Chai-les of V alois? Describe 
the king's death. 

Conversation on Chapter XVII. ■ 
What means was the wife of Marigny accused of having nsed to taka 
away the life of Louis X. ? (P. 188). How were the Jews treated ? What 
is saidof the islands of the Seine ? (P. 189). Of the palace of the Tuileries'.' 
What was the "House of God?" What is said of its accommodations for 
the sidi ? (P. 190). What is the present condition of this hospital ? At 
what era was the change made ? What is said of the wood of Vincennes 1 
(P. 191). What object of interest still remains at Vincennes ? Explain the 
nature of the jubilee established by Pope Boniface. How, and for what 
.reason has the time of the occuirence of the jubilee been since changed? 

CHAPTEB XVIII. 

(P. 193). What wore the circumstances of Philip's ascension of the ttirone ? 
How did he acquire the title of Philip the Fortunate ? By whom was his 
claim to the throne of France disputed ? On what ground did Edward III., 
of England claim the crown of France ? What preparations did he make 
for war ? What artifice did Philip employ, during the truce, for capturing 
the Breton nobles ? (P. 194). What did the death of the Breton nobles 
arouse Edward to do ? Describe Edward's method of attack upon France ? 
How was his retreat caused? Describe Philip's mode of defense. What 
difficulty was caused by the Genoese ? (P. 195). How was the rout of the 
French army commenced? What is related of the king of Bohemia? 
When Philip saw that the English were conquerors, what did he do? 
'P. 196). What did Edward do after this victory? How did he succeed in 
the siege of Calais ? Wbat caused peace ? Wliat is the origin of the title 
dauphin? What acquisitions of territory did Philip make? During his 
reign, what was the state of Bretagne ? 

Conversation on Chapter XVIII. 
(P. 197). What was the nature of the tax called the Gabelle ? (P. 198). 
What is farming a tax ? What is said of the ravages of the black death ? 
Over what countries did it spread ? (P. 198). What account is here given 
of the Danish colony in West Greenland ? Why are they not visited at the 
present day ? Give an account of the two attempts which have been mads 
to reach them. (P. 200). Mention the principal French historians. What 
•a said of Daniel? (P. 201). Of French literatjire in general? 

CHAPTER XIX. 

(P. 202). How did John acquire the title of "the Good?" What was his 
?eal character ? What was his first act of importance ? By what action 
lid he offend the king of Navarre ? (P. 203). What were the possessions 
of the king of Navarre? Why did he not receive the crown- of France ? 
What was his character ? What crime of his is here mentioned ? Give 
the circumstances of his imprisonment. Was the truce between France 
and England well kept? (P. 204). What action of John did Edward con- 
sider an infraction of the truce ? Who was the first to commence war 1 
Where did the two kings meet? Describe the position of the Black 
Prince. What part did cardinal Perigord take ? What would Edward 
have consented to do? Wliat did John require ? (P. 205). How did John 
commence the battle? What was the success of the cavalry? Describe 
the rest of the battle. To whom did John surrender? How did the Black 
Prince treat John? (P. 206). What compliment did he pay him'.' How 
was John treated in England ? How long did he remain there ? Wliat is 
said of the management of the dauphin ? What occasioned his difficulties "•. 
What advantage did the nobles take of these difficulties ? Describe the in 
•urrection called the Jacquerie ? (P. 207). W^iat effect did this have UDoa 



QUESTIONS. 61S 

the qaarrela cf the ti'ii^s? After this insuirectivni was quelled, what did 
Charles of Navarre do? Which side in the dispute did Marcel take? 
After the dauphin became regent, where was his authority the strongest ? 
Who possessed the most power in Paris ? What outraije did Marcel there 
procee? to? (P. 208). How had he fortified Paris? What piece of treach- 
ery did Marcel attempt? How was he prevented? What efi'ect did Mar- 
cel's deftth have upon the affairs of the king of Navarre? What is said of 
the clQi-4 of this quan-el? After Charles withdrew his claims, what occu- 
pied the attention of the dauphin ? What course did Edward take ? WhaS 
means of defense did the dauphin adopt? (P. 209). What did Edward 
wish of the tTrench? What circumstance caused him to consent to the 
ivishes of the French nation? On what terms did the French obtain the 
release of John ? (P. 210). What plans did John begin to form on his return 
home ? What was the conduct of his sons, the hostages in England ? How 
were they treated there? What course did John feel obliged to take' 
What is said of the close of the house of B urgundy ? 

Conversation on Chapter XIX. 
(P. 211). What is the probable origin of the term Jacquerie ? Where is 
to be found an account of this insurrection ? What anecdote is given here ? 
(P. 212). Describe the taper. Give an account of the opening hours of the 
day in Paris. What fniits had the French? (P. 213). What vegetables? 
What is said of the conduct of the scholars ? (P. 214). What studies at- 
tracted most attention ? What character does Petrarch give the English ? 
Do you know what Petrarch was celebrated for? (P. 215). What does he 
say of a French army? How does he describe France at the time of his 
visit ? What does he say of Charles V. ? 

CHAPTER XX. 

(P. 216). What was the condition of Charles's kingdom when his reign 
commenced? What was his own character? What was his disposition 
toward learning ? (P. 217). What new method of conducting a battle did 
he adopt? What did Edward III. say of him? What was the character 
of Du Guesclin? What is said of his expedition into Spain ? What change 
in the disposition of Edward the Black Prince was observed after his return 
fi'om Spain? What was supposed to be the cause? (P. 218). What ad- 
vantage did Charles take of this ? On what pretext did Charles attack 
Guienne ? With what success ? What anecdote is told of the death of 
Du Guesclin ? (P. 219). What curious difficulty did Charles find in obtain" 
ing a successor to Du Guesclin ? Who finally accepted it ? What is said 
of Edward's death ? Of the reign of his grandson? Of the English pos- 
sessions in France. (P. 220). How did the king of NavaiTe act toward 
Charles ? What were the circumstances of Charles's death ? What was 
its cause ? To what extent did he increase the royal library ? How was 
the death of the king of Navarre caused ? 

Conversation on Chapter XX. 
(P. 221). What was Charles's character for attention to business ? What 
is said of his policy in carrying on war? (P. 222). How is his conduct in 
view of death spoken of? What is said of his wife ? What advice did the 
French poet give the ladies of that day ? (P. 223). Describe the boots worn 
at that time. Describe the rest of the men's dress. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

(P. 224). What is said in general of the reign of Charles VI. ? (P. 225). 
Who was appointed regent during the minority of Charles ? What was 
the disposition of the regent's brothers ? Describe the controversy between 
the Duke of Anjou and Durazzo. What was the result of the duke's ex- 
pedition into Italy ? Who succeeded to the regency of France ? (P. 226), 
For what reason had the education of Charles been neglected by his xxn 



ttft* QUESTIONS. 

ilesT Describe the attempt at invading England. How was it defeated 1 
When was a second attempt made ? How was this cne defeatf.-d ? (P. 227). 
What is said of the first part of the king's reign ? Give an account of the 
caase of his resolution to attack Bretagne. By what incident Jvas his ex- 
pedition broken up? (P. 228). What accident brought on a return of hia 
insanity 1 (P. 229). What was the state of feeling between the dukos of 
Burgundy and of Orleans ? What was the result of the quarrel between 
them ? How did the dake of Burgundy escape punishment ? What effect 
did these circumstances have upon the duchess of Orleans 1 (P. 230). 
Were I'rance and England engaged in any contest now ? What did Hen- 
ry V. do? Describe the siege of Harfleur. What was the state of the 
English army when it reached Agincourt? (P. 231). Give an account of the 
battle of Agincourt. How did it happen that the French, who possessed 
the most powerful army, were defeated ? What prevented Henry from 
taking advantage of his victory ? What effect did this have upon the con- 
troversy between the Burgundians and Armagnacs ? What account is 
given of the conduct of Charles ? How did the Duke of Burgundy obtain an 
entrance into Paris? (P. 232). How was the life of the dauphin saved? 
Under what circumstances did Henry land in France ? With what success 
did he meet ? Give an account of the death of the Duke of Burgundy. 
(P. 233). What steps did Philip the Good take to revenge the death of his 
father? On what conditions did Henry obtain the appointment to the re- 
gency ? What was now the apparent position of the dauphin ? What 
circumstance brought Henry back to France ? What prevented his car- 
rying on a vigorous war in France ? (P. 234). Where did he die? What 
is said of Charles VI.'s life and death? Who was his successor? What 
can you say of the affairs of Naples during the reign of Charles VI. ? 

Conversation on Chapter XXI. 
(P. 235). What is said of the introduction of plays into France ? Wheu 
were they introduced into England ? What account is given of the early 
plays, and the manner of performing them ? (P. 236). What is said of the 
value of the sou at that time ? Do you know what American coin it is now 
considered equal to? What is he.'e said of the histor" of playing cards? 
What is said of the meaning of the figures upon the cards ? What are the 
French words for choir and heart? (P. 237). Describe the murder of Mont- 
didier? By what means was it discovered? What test was employed to 
discover the guilt of Macaire ? (P. 238). What was the result of the trial 1 
What is said of the gipsies ? (P. 239). What is the common opinion as 
to their origin ? 

CHAPTER XXII. 

At what age was Charles crowned? (P. 240). Under what circum- 
stances did he commence his reign ? What was his character and dispo- 
sition ? What position did the English occupy in France ? What is said 
of the manner in which Salisbury conducted the siege of Orleans ? What 
was the battle of the herrings ? What did the French offer ? What result 
did Charles pi-epare himself for? Who encouraged him to hold out? Give 
the early history of Joan of Arc as fully as you can. What success did she 
meet with at Orleans ? What effect did her courage and religious preten- 
sions have upon the French soldiery ? What was the effect of her presence 
upon the English? What was the second enterprise which Joan wished 
to perform? Did she succeed in this ? (P. 242). Under what circumstances 
did she fall into the hands of the English ? How ought they to have treated 
her? How did they treat her? Describe her trial. On what pretense 
was she put to death ? What was her prophecy at the place of her death ? 
How was it afterward verified? (P. 243). What is said of Charles's mili- 
tary men? What quality prevented his own success in war ? What pre- 
vented activity on the part of the English ? What was the state of feeling 
in France with respect to the English government ? What diminished the 
iuthority of tlie English ? (P. 245). What was the character of Louis, tl:t 



QUESTIONS eii 

ion of Charles ? What particular act incurred the displeasti.'e of his father ? 
To what banishment was he sentenced? (P. 246). What was his conduct 
after the close of his banishment ? What was the close of the war with 
the English ? Of what crimes was Louis suspected ? What caused 
Charles's death ? Who succeeded him upon the throne ? (P. 247). Wbai- 
military companies did Charles establish? What is said of the retui'n Sf- 
the duke of Orleans from England ? 

Conversation on Chapter XXII. 
(P. 248). "What is said of Agnes Sorel? Why was she called the Lady 
of Beauty ? What account is given of the captivity of the duke of Orleans 1 
fP. 249). What became of the qtieen of Bavaria? Descrilse her monument. 
(P. 250). After the death of Gregoiy XI. what difficulty arose among the 
cardinals ? To what extent was the controversy carried ? What did the 
emperor Sigismond do? How did pope John escape from Sigismond? 
(P. 251). How was the controversy with respect to the office of pope finallj 
settled ? What account of Huss is here given ? How did Jei'ome of 
Prague fall into the power of his enemies ? (P. 252). What is said of liia 
manner of defending himself? What circumstances rendered his eloquence 
remarkable ? Describe his execution. (P. 253). What had been taking 
place during this time in the empire of the East? Who was the emperor 
of Constantinople ? How did Mohammed II. gain this city ? In whose 
power has it since remained? What advantage to the rest of Europe fol- 
lowed the capture of Constantinople ? (P. 254). What is here told us of the 
Chronicles orJTroissart ? What of Monstrelet's history ? What does he tel 
us of dress in 1461 ? 

CHAPTER XXni. 

(P. 255). What did Louis do on hearing of his father's death? (P. 25ff; 
Describe his character ? Whither did he proceed after his coronation ' 
What was his first act as king ? How did he proceed in reference to the 
officers who had been appointed by his father? How did the nobles regard 
these changes ? For what reason did the Count of Charolois join the league 
of the Public Good ? (P. 257). Under what circumstances was the battle 
at Montlheri fought? Who gained the victory? What did Louis do? 
What means did he take for enlisting the Parisians upon his side ? How 
was the army of Charolois afterward increased? What prevented theii 
success ? (P. 258). How did Louis succeed in breaking up the league ? 
Did he keep his promises to the members of the league ? What became of 
the Duke of Berri ? Who succeeded to the dukedom of Burgundy on the 
death of Philip the Good ? How did Louis hope to disarm the resentment 
of Charles? (P. 259). How did Louis come to the appointed meeting? 
What surprised him there ? How came he to be taken prisoner by Charles ? 
What means did he have recourse to for obtaining release? (P. 260). In 
what state of mind was Charles ? How was the matter finally settled ? 
How did the Parisians regard these affairs? (P. 261). How was Charles 
again displeased by Louis ? What prevented a war? How was the duke 
of Bern's death caused? How did Charles avenge it? What account is 
given of St. Pol ? What agreement respecting him did Charles and Louis 
make? (P. 262). What was the result? Under what circumstances wa.s 
Louis threatened with war from England? Did he resort to arms for de 
fense ? How did he obtain peace ? What is said of his conduct toward 
the English? (P. 263). How was the Duke of Burgundy satisfied by the 
treaty between Louis and the king of England ? What induced him to 
make peace with Louis? In what direction did he next turn his arms? 
What reason had Campobasso for being offended with Charles? What re« 
venge did he take ? (P. 264). Into whose hands did the possessions of the 
Duke of Burgundy fall? What is said of Mary s situation? How did th« 
people of Ghent receive the news of the duke's death ? How did Mary 
attempt to conciliate Louis? What means did he employ for increasing 
the rebellions disnosition of her subjects ? How did te succeed ? (P. 265V 



5(6 OUESriDNS. 

What acts of rebellion did the citizens of Ghent proceed to ? Whom di< 
Mary marry ? After her death how were her husband and son treated '( 
What is said of the closing years ff the life of king Louis ? (P. 266). How 
did he guard himself against treachery from his subjects ? In what ways 
did he attempt to conceal from others the state of his health 1 (P. 267) 
What means did he take to prolong his life ? "What is said of his death' 
What was his treatment of his first wife '/ How did he treat h?.s second 
wife ? What children did he leave ? What is said of the pleasure he took 
in executions? (P. 268). Recount the additiois which Louis made to the 
territories of France, and the means by which he acquired them. 

Conversation on Chapter XXIIL 
What is said of king Regnier ? What emperor is Louis said to have 
resembled? What is said of his religion? (P. 269). How did he regard 
justice among his subjects ? What waa his treatment of the learned 
Greeks? Why did he establish posts? (P. 270). What is said of his skill 
in conciliating those whom he wished to serve nini ? What means did he 
use? What is said of the book called Q,uentin Durward? Do you know 
who was the author of it? How is Louis's death described? (P. 271). How 
do Louis and Charles of Burgundy compare? What is said of the former 
prosperity of the Netherlands? How was this prosperity diminished? 
What is said of the Swiss and their taste for refinement? Relate the 
history of the diamond here mentioned. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

(P. 272). Why did not Louis appoint a regency ? (P. 273). What did he 
do instead ? What difficulties did Anne at first meet with ? What char- 
acter did she exhibit ? Who was particularly troublesome to her ? What 
relationship existed between Charles VIII. and Anne ? (See P. 267). 
State the circumstances respecting Bretagne which have been mentioned. 
What was the result of the battle ? (P. 274). How did this affect the Duke 
of Bretagne? What steps were taken in regard to the marriage of his 
daughter Anne ? Why did she not man-y Charles VIII. ? Wliat disposi- 
tion did Maximilian show ? What was that of Henry VII. of England ? 
(P. 275). How did Charles attempt to win the hand of Anne ? Did he suc- 
ceed ? How did the match turn out? What did the Bretons think of it? 
What was the political result of this alliance ? What character did Charles 
now exhibit? What was his principal fault? For what good quality was 
he remarkable ? (P. 276). What is said of his early life and education ? What 
attempts did he make to remedy the defect ? Did he persevere ? Why 
not ? What were Maximilian's feelings at losing his bride ? How was 
his displeasure aggravated? What did he do? How did Charles obtain 
peace? What was the scheme in which Chai'les felt interested? Who 
encouraged Charles in his attempt? (P. 277j. Who discouraged him? 
When did he set out for Naples ? Wliat is said of his army and prepara- 
tions ? Why did not the Italians prepare to oppose him vigorously ? 
What detained Charles at Asti ? What difficulties did he meet with when 
he reached Turin? (P. 278). What did Ludovico Sforza do? Describe 
Charles's march to Naples. What were Alfonso's feelings ? Wliat did ha 
do? What was Ferdinand's character? (P. 279). How was Charles re- 
ceived in Naples ? What effect did his success have upon him ? Was his 
government good ? What confederacy was formed against him ? Wliat 
did Charles decide upon doing? Why did he halt at Pisa ? Why did the 
Duke of Orleans delay ? (P. 280). How great a difference was there be- 
tween the army of Charles and that of the Italians ? What was the result 
of the battle of Fomova ? Where did Charles go ? What took place iv 
Naples? (P. 281). Wliat effect did this have upon the French nation? 
What upon Charles ? Describe the enterprise as it was commenced. How 
for did he proceed ? What has been suggested as the cause of this change 
of plan ? What course did Chftrles take after this in his government 
Oespribe Cbar^g's death. 



QUESTIONS 6i7 

Conversation on Chapter XXIV. 

(P. 282). What does Philip de Comines say of the expedition to ItaJy '? 
WTiat were his misfortunes ? "Who restored him to favor ? (P. 283). What 
causes combined, enabled Charles to cut his way through 40,000 Italian 
troops, as he did '. What does Philip de Comines say of the march to Asti 1 
(P. 284). AVl.at is the stoiy of Comines and the boots? What were the 
amusements to which Charles YIII. devoted himself? What changes had 
taken place in theatrical amusements ? What is said of the stage ? 
(P. 285). How is the procession of the giant described ? Wliat is the tra- 
dition about it^ What other similar ceremonies are here spoken of I 
Describe them. 

CHAPTEU XXV. 

(P. 286). What is said of the early life of Louis XI. ? Mention the par- 
ticular difficulties to which he was exposed ? Why did he wish to be di- 
vorced from Joan ? Whom did he then marry ? What political object did 
he thus attain ? (P. 288). To what did Louis first turn liis attention ? How 
did he secure Milan? What was done with Sforza? How did he gain 
Naples ? What difficulties arose between Louis and Ferdinand? (P. 289). 
What agreement was formed between Louis and the Archduke Ferdinand^ 
Give an account of the infraction of the treaty. What was Philip's con- 
duct ? How did Louis treat him ? How did he attempt to revenge him- 
self? Wliat success did these attempts meet with ? What eifect did 
their failure have upon Philip? How did the death of Pope Alexander 
AiFect the affairs of Italy ? (P. 290). What is said of the circumstances of 
the death of Isabella of Castile ? Through what hands did the government 
of Castile then pass? What is said of the league of Carabray? What 
was the character of Amboise, who was up to this time Louis's counselor? 
(P. 291). How did the war between Julius and Louis result? Why did 
Louis relax the severity of his measures? What eflect did this have? 
How did Julius strengthen himself? What became of the kingdom of Na- 
varre ? What did Henry VIII. do ? What is said of the battle of Spurs ? 
(P. 292). What was the character of Louis as a warrior? What as a poli- 
dcian ? WTiat as a king?. Whom did he marry after the death of Anne ? 
Who was his successor ? 

Conversation on Chapter XXV. 
(P. 293). What is said of Maximilian? (P. 294). What story is told of 
the death of Pope Alexander? (P. 295). What is said of Gaston de Foixl 
What anecdote of his bravery is here given ? What is said of the Lombard 
and Saxon architecture? (P. 296) What is said in addition, relative to tha 
buildings of France ? 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

(P. 297). What are we told of the person of Francis I. ? Of his charac- 
tor? (P. 298). What were his faults? What were his wishes in respect 
to Italy ? What confederacy was formed against him ? What success did 
his army obtain in Italy? Describe the battle here spoken of. (P. 299). 
What was its result ? Wliat political results followed this battle ? What 
is said of the controversy between Charles and Francis? (P. 300). What 
was Francis's object in meeting Henry near Andres ? What is said of their 
ineeting ? What course did Charles take ? How did war begin ? (P 
iOl). What is said of the military officers of Francis ? What of the influ- 
ence of Louisa? What effect had these circumstances upon the military 
success of Francis? How did Laatrec exonerate himself from blame for 
his ill success in Italy? What was the cause of Semblanijai's death? 
fP 302). Did Francis maintain his resolution to subdue the Milanese? 
Wliat caused the treason of Bourbon ? What steps did Charles ta\e in 
eoDsaauenoe ? Give an account of Bourbon's plans. What was his success 



6l« QUESTIONIS. 

iu invading France ? (P. 303). Give an account i '' Francis's pursuit of the 
■nonstable of Bourbon. Describe the siege of Pavia. (P. 304). Describe 
tlie capture of the king. What were Charles's feelings regarding this bat 
tie? Upon what conditions did he offer to release Fi-ancis ? Did Francis 
accept? (P. 30.5). Under what circumstances was he carried to Spiiiii? 
Describe the efforts made to obtain his release. Wliat caused Charles b; 
relax his severity? How was Francis finally released? (P. 306). Did 
Francis perform the conditions of the treaty ? How did Charles revenge 
himself? "What is now said of the war? How did Bourbon hope to paci- 
fy his soldiers ? (P. 307). Describe his death. What is said of tho sack of 
B,ome ? How Were the enterprises of France in Italy closed ? What ac- 
count of the treaty of peace is here given ? How did Francis occupy himself 
during the time of peace ? (P. 308). What is said of the next invasion of 
France ? What did James V. do ? What account of Francis's sons ia 
here given? What curious agreement was made between Chai'les and 
Francis? Who broke it? What was the result? What open aid did 
Charles receive? (P. 309). What secret aid"? Give an account of the 
ti-eaty now made. What were the circumstances of the duke of Orleans's 
death ? Wliat is the story of the banquet? (P. 310). What were the con- 
ditions of the peace between Henry and Francis ? What were the cir- 
cumstances of Francis's death ? What is here said of Luther? 

Conversation cm Chapter XXVI. 

(P. 311). WTiat is said of the constable de Bourbon ? What is said of his 
father and mother? What prompted his treason? (P. 312). What was 
his success ? What is said of Francis ? What evil did he introduce ? 
(P. 313). WTiat buildings did he erect ? Describe French houses. (P. 314). 
Give tne particulars respecting houses, on this page. (P. 315). What is 
the early history of the chevalier Bay ai'd ? (P. 316). What was his chara'' 
ter ? Give an account of his death. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

(P. 318). How did Henry II. resemble his father? WTiat were his faults 
as a king? (P. 319). What is said of Claude and Montmorenci ? Who had 
the most influence over the king ? (P. 320). What towns did Henry take 
in Lorraine? Describe Charles's attempt to regain Metz. What unusual 
determination did the emperor form? (P. 321). How did he carry it out? 
What prize did Philip hold out to Henry ? What did Henry do ? How 
did his entei-prise succeed ? Describe the siege of St. Q,uentin. (P. 322). 
Wliat w^as the result of the battle ? What criticism is here passed upon 
the conduct of this invasion? Wliat circumstances strengthened the 
French? WTiat were the conditions of the peace ? (P. 323). Describe the 
king's death. 

Conversation on Chapter XXVII. 

(P. 324j. WTiat became of Montgomeri ? How di 1 he fall into the hands 
of Catherine? Wliat anecdote is here given? (P. 325). Wliat is said of 
theHugonots? Of the Jesuits ? What was Loyola's character ? What 
were the duties of the Jesuits ? (P. 326). Wliat is said of the reputation 
ultimately acquired by the Jesuits ? How was the society governed ? 
What precautions were taken in admitting new members ? What was 
the aim of the Jesuits ? What was their success ? WTiat is said of the 
abolition of the societj ? (P. 327). What is here said of tournaments ? 
Describe the tilt between the duke de Nemours and the prior of Lon-aine. 
What causes for the abdication of Charles are assigned ? (P. 328). What 
account of his apartments in the monastery of St. Justus is here given ? 
How did he occupy his time during his retirement ? Describe his singula! 
penance. (P. 329). For what vras the palnrc of the Escurial built? 



QUESTIOKG 613 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

(P 33^). At wiiat ago did Francis II. ascend the throne What WftS 
the state of his kingdom ? Did he give promise of becoming an able 
king? What is saiJ of Anthony de Bourbon's descent? (P. 331). What 
of his character? What of his marriage? What were the characters of 
his brothers ? Wliat prevented Louis from having influence at court ? 
How was the power of Montmorenci weakened ? WHiat did he finally do? 
What is said of the persecutions of the Hugonots ? How were the people 
of France affected toward the duke of Guise ? What account of the con 
spiracy of Amboise is given ? (P. 332). What of the trial and condemna- 
tion of the prince of Conde ? What circumstances prevented his execu- 
tion ? What was the cause of Francis's death ? What political changes 
did it make? (Page 333). On what conditions did Catherine make treaty 
with Anthony ? (P. 334). What is said of Catherine's character ? Give 
some account of her history. (P. 335). What* were her feelings toward 
the Protestants ? What other qualities of hers are mentioned ? What is 
said of her appearance ? (P. 336). Wliat instances are given of her belief 
in magic? What is said of the Hugonots? (P. 337). What reason was 
given by the Catholics for condemning the book of Psalms ? What persons 
are spoken of as having opposed the persecutions of the times ? (P. 338). 
Describe the discovery of the scarlet dye. 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

(P. 339). Under what circumstances did the reign of Charles IX. com 
mence ? (P. 340). What measures did the duke of Guise and Catherine 
take ? How did war between the Catholics and Hugonots break out ? 
(P. 341). What account is given of the death of the king of Navarre ? 
What was the result of the siege of Rouen ? How did Montmorenci 
escape? Describe the battle of Dreux. What is said of the capture of 
Conde? (P. 34^). Describe the assassination of the duke of Guise. For 
what purpose did Catherine travel over the kingdom ? Did the Protestants 
place confidence in her promises ? (P. 343). What did they consider to be 
indications of danger ? What did they do ? Do you know what is meant 
by holding Paris m blockade ? Describe the death of Montmorenci. Who 
received the command in his place ? (P. 344). When did war break out 
again? Describe the capture of Conde. Describe his death. Who be- 
came nominally the head of the Protestants on the death of Conde ? Who, 
in reality, held the command ? How did the war go on after this ? How 
was Coligny received at court ? What marriage had been aiTanged ? 
Why? What is is said of the sincerity of Charles and Catherine? (P 
345). Who opposed the projected marriage ? What account of the death 
of the queen of Navan-e is given ? WTiat were the feelings of the Hugo- 
nots in reference to Coligny ? What attack upon him was made ? By 
whom was it made ? How was he treated by the king? (P. 346). What 
ia said of the origin of the massacre of St. Bartholomew ? What account 
is given of the conduct of the king and of Catherine ? Describe the death 
of Coligny ? (P. 347). What is said of the conduct of the king on the next 
day ? How long did the massacre continue ? What instances of persons who 
were saved are given ? (P. 348). What attempt was made to throw the 
odium of this deed upon the Protestants ? What was done with Conde 
and the king of Navan-e ? On what condition were they released? Did 
they keep their word ? What did the Hugonots next do ? What is said 
of the siege of Rochelle ? (P. 349). What account is given of the election 
of tl e duke of Anjou to the crown of Poland ? What is said of the sick 
ness of Charles ? What reason had the count d'Alenqon for wishing to go 
over to the Hugonots ? What is said of the symptoms of the king's dis- 
ease ? (P. 350). Wbat did his physicians say of its cause ? Whaf steps 
did Catherine take m reference to the regency ? Who was to sxtfioeo^ 
Charles ? W'liat is said of Michel L'Hopital ? 



620 QUESTIONb. 

CONVEpSATION ON CHAPTER XXIX 

(P. 351). What is said of the early education of Char'tes ? WTial tf hit 
wdor in his pursuits ? (P. 352). What anecdote is told of his fondness foi' 
practical jokes ? Describe his appearance. What is said of his remorse T 
(?. 353). Give Margaret's story of her fright during the massacre cf St. Bar- 
tholomew's. (P. 354). What comparison is instituted between Cond6 and 
Coligny? (P. 3S5). What is said of the offices of admiral and general? 
Give the best information you can about the navy. What account is given 
t»f La Grande Frangaise ? (P. 356). Give an account of the galleys. 

CHAPTER XXX. 

(P. 357). Describe Henry's departure from Poland. What character dia 
I e now begin to exhibit ? (P. 358). How did the queen regard his frivolous 
occupations ? What account is given of his passion for the princess of 
Conde? Give an account of the league now formed among the Catholics 
Who was its leader? (P. 359). What part in it did Henry take? What 
was now the state of feeling in France ? What were the plans and con- 
duct of the Duke of Alen<;on? What was the state of feeling in France in 
respect to the king of Navan-e ? (P. SCO). Between what parties w^as the 
war of the three Henrys waged? What caused the death of the prince of 
Cond6? What embarrassments did the king now meet with? (P. 361). 
Describe the quarrel and meeting between the king and the duke of 
Guise. How did the plan of bringing in Swiss soldiers result ? How did 
the people proceed to fortify themselves ? (P. 362). What is said of the 
king's escape ? Wliat plan did he at length form ? Describe the assassi- 
lation of the duke of Guise ? (P. 363). What was Catherine's advice ? 
How was she situated at the time ? What are the particulars of the next 
assassination ? What was the result of the death of the duke of Guise ? 
What measures did Heni-y now take ? How did the meeting between the 
two Henrys result? (P. 364). Describe the siege of Paris — the assassina- 
tion of the king — his death. Whom did he appoint as bis successor? (P 
■565). What is said of the dynasty of the family of Valois ? 

Conversation on Chapter XXX. 

(P. 366). What is said of the character of Henry HI. ? What of his pe- 
niliar habits in dress? What amusements are mentioned? (P. 367). 
What was the character of the soldiers of that day ? What is said of the 
mnor? What exchange in weapons was made now? (P. 368). What 
was Elizabeth's present to the Hugom^ts ? What is said of the wealth of 
Conde and Henry of Navan-c ? What is said of uniforms ? (P. 369). What 
is said of surgery ? What of poetry? (P. 370j. Give the account of the 
school here given. What is said of the introduction of snuff and telescope* ? 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

(P. 371). How did the Parisians regard the death of king Henry? What 
objection was raised to the king of Navarre as liis successor ? (P. 372). 
What party refused to acknowledge him ? Who was the other candidate ? 
What account is givenof the war in Normandy? What additional embar- 
rassments did Henry meet ? (P. 373). What was his character ? What is 
said of Mayenne ? — of the death of Charles X. ? — of the siege of Paris ? (P. 
374). Describe the pi'ogress of the siege. How did it result ? Why did 
not Henry take Paris by assault? (P. 375). What step did he find it 
necessary to take to secure his throne ? What event hastened this step ? 
Kow did he treat his nobles ? What is said of his coronation ? (P. 37G) 
How was the controversy between Heary and the duke of Mayenno finally 
settled? Wliat was now the state of France? What war was sU'll 
waging ? What is said of the capture and recapture of Amiens ? " On what 
terms was a treaty made between France and Spain? Wlio succeedetj 
Ftilip IT ? (P. 377). What is said of the edict of Nantes? How did the 



QUESTIONS. 65(1 

Frenj/i feel toward Henry ? What good qualities did he show ? Wbatia 
said of his interest in arts and manufactures? (P. 378). What faults of 
Henry IV. are here mentioned ? What was the character of Mary de Me- 
dicis '? (P. 379). What is said of the war with the duke of Savoy, — and of 
its termination ? What was the nature of the alliance which Henry wished 
to be formed ? For what expedition did he prepare ? What ceremony 
took place before his departure ? (P. 380). On what occasion did the king's 
death take place ? Describe the circumstances of it. What were tha 
character and motives of the assassin ? What similar attempts had pre- 
viously been made ? 

Conversation on Chapter XXXI. 
(P. 381). What does the duke of Sully say of Henry's death? _ (P. 382). 
Describe the meeting between himself and the queen. What is said of 
his character? Wliat were his first occupations in the daj"^ ? Describe his 
manner of taking a walk. (P. 383). What vrere the formalities of dinner? 
What is said of the interest taken by the French in gardening ? What of 
the furniture? (P. 384). Describe the bed upon which the dead body of 
Montmorency was laid. What description is here given of a certain French 
country house ? What is said of the writers of that day ? (P. 385). What 
is said of Henry's management of Paris? What of the introduction of 
coaches? (P. 386). What were the habits of Hem-y IV. as king? To what 
extent was expense in dress then carried ? Describe the dress here spoken 
of. (P. 387). What curious origins of fashions are given? What is said of 
Hem-y's cradle ? 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

(P. 388). Who became regent during the minority of Louis XIII. ? What 
manifestation of partiality oifended her people ? (P. 389). What were the 
plans of Mary ? What marriages were contracted ? How were the sub- 
sequent troubles temporarily settled ? Describe the death of Vitry. (P. 
390). Describe the death of L eonora. What character did the king exhibit ? 
Who first influenced him ? (P. 391). What is said of Richelieu ? Whons 
does he resemble ? What is said of his power ? What were the results 
of his influence? How did he stop the religious wars? (P. 392). How 
wei-e the difficulties between the Catholics and Hugonots settled for the 
time ? Who broke the treaties between them ? What did the king do at 
Beam ? What contests followed this act ? What is said of the conduct 
of the king on the isle of Rhe ? (P. 393). How was the contest managed on 
the part of the Hugonots ? What account is given of the next treaty 1 
How was it observed? How was the trouble which followed the infraction 
of this last treaty quieted '! For what reason did the king agree to the pro- 
visions of the treaty proposed by England? (P. 394). After the war with 
Spain was concluded, what side did Spain and England take in the contro- 
versy between Louis and the* Hugonots ? How did the English assist the 
Hugonots ? What is said of Buckingham's management? What unusual 
means of obstructing the harbor did Richelieu jadopt? (P. 395). What is 
said of the expedition conducted by the earl of Denbigh? What is said of 
the situation of the Rochellers ? What was the result of the siege ? (P. 
396). What became of the mole ? What position have the Hugonots 
since occupied? After these events what was the principal object of the 
French government ? What is said of the invasion by the Spanish army 1 
(P. 397). Give an account of the attempt made to assassinate Richelieu 
How was it frustrated? (P. 398). What is said of the death of Richelieu? 
What means did the king take to secure ti'anquillity during the minority of 
bis son ? Describe his death. 

Conversation on Chapter XXXII. 
(P. 399). How did Richelieu obtain his influence ? What is said of tha 
commencement of his career? (P. 400). What is said of his final position 1 
Wliat prevented the other kings firom opposing him with success ? What 



€S2 QUESTIONS. 

are ftie buildings which he erected ? (P. 401). What is said of the charactot 
of Richelieu? Describe his appearance when in command of his troops. 
(P. 402). What anecdote of the duke of Sully is here given 1 Under whal 
physical disadvantage did Louis XIII. labor ? (P. 403). What is said of 
Louis's education ? What of the progress of literature, and the establish- 
ment of newspapers ? WTiat description is given of Paris 1 What waa 
thT eflSciency of the police at that day ? What is said of the robberies ? 
What account is given of the equestrian statue ? What has become of it t 

CHAPTER XXXIIL 

(P. 406). What was the state of affaii'S after the king's death? Who 
was in command of the army in Flanders ? (P. 407). Under what circum- 
stances did he fight the battle of Rocroi? What were the leading events 
of his campaign ? While these events were taking place, what, was the 
progress of affairs in Flanders ? (P. 408). What was the cause of the un- 
fortunate dissensions in France ? What account of the difficulties is 
given ? What sort of a man was cai-dinal de Retz ? (P. 409). What ac- 
count is given of the distresses in which the royal family were involved 1 
What is said to have been the motive of those who joined the Fronde? 
What events in the life of Conde are mentioned? (P. 410). What is said 
of Turenne ? How was the war with the Fronde closed ? What is said 
of the king's management? What examples of the inconsistency of par- 
Uament are givtn? (P. 411). How was the prince of Conde occupied? 
How did Louis obtain the alliance of Cromwell? What is said of the 
success of Turenne? (P. 412). What was the position of Charles 11.1 
What was the character of the queen of Louis XIV. ? What is said of 
Louis's management after the death of Mazaiin ? (P. 413). WTiat ground 
had Louis for claiming Flanders ? What was the agreement between 
himself and Leopold? What means were adopted for keeping this treaty 
a secret ? What advantages had Louis for carrying on war, at the time 
when he entered Flanders? (P. 414). Give an account of the peace of 
Aix-la-Chapelle. What was the secret intention of Louis in making this 
treaty ? What means did he take to break off the alliance between En- 
gland and Holland? 'How did he succeed? What is said of his entry 
into Holland ? (P. 415). What was his success ? How were Muyden and 
Amsterdam preserved to the Dutch ? What were the results of the va- 
rious attempts made by the Dutch to obtain peace ? What reason had 
they for hoping for assistance from other countries ? Wliat was the char- 
acter of the prince of Orange? (P. 416). What is said of the attempt to 
take the Hague, and of its result ? What assistance did the Dutch at last 
receive? Why did Charles make peace with the Datch? What is said 
of the conduct of Turenne ? (P. 417). When and where did Turenne die ? 
What account is given of the subsequent life of Conde ? — of that of Monte- 
cuculi? — of that of De Ruyter ? Give the terms of the treaty of Nime- 
guen. Was the prince of Orange satisfied w'lth them ? What did he do? 
(P. 418). What effect did Louis's military success have upon his own self 
esteem ? How much credit did he really deserve ? 

Convkhsation on Chapter XXXIII. 
(P. 419). What comparison is instituted between cardinals Richelieu 
and Mazarin? Why was Mazarin unpopular? Wliat is said of his pro- 
nunciation of the French language ? What is said of De Retz ? (P. 420). 
What is said of the situation of the poor during the wars of the Fronde ? 
Give the story taken from the letter of the lady abbess. Wliat is said of 
tke duchess de Longueville ? (P. 421). What is said of the character of 
mademoiselle de Montpensier? How was her marriage with Lauzun 
frustrated ? (P. 442). What story is told of Lauzun's loss of favor ? Wliat 
is said of the intercourse between Lauzun and Fouquet in prison? (P 
f23). Through wkat influence, was Lauzun released? How did he gain 
the entire good will of tlp:3 king ? What account is given of his after life, 
and of that of his wife Wliat is said of Louis XIV. ? (P. 424). Whal 



QUESTIONS. 621 

■rs Home of the advantages which he obtained for Franta ? What is said 
af his character for politeness ? (P. 425). What ways did he take fof 
showing favor to his courtiers ? What changes did he make at Versailles ? 
(P. 426). What is said of his education ? What is said of his reign ? What 
was the character of its three periods ? 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

(P. 427). What account is given of Louis's militaiy operations after the 
treaty of Nimeguen ? What enterprise did he persuade the Turks to trn- 
dertake ? (P. 428). Wliat did he do next T What towns did he take after 
the Turks had retired? What had been the influence of Mazarin and 
Colbert in respect to the Hugonots? What were the first steps taken 
against the Hugonots ? (P. 429). What measures were taken to compa) 
the Hugonots to become Catholics ? What treatment did those who re- 
fused to do so receive ? What was the substance of the twelfth article 
in the revocation of the edict of Nantes ? Was it faithfully observed ? 
(P. 430). What is said of the conduct of those who took refuge in England 7 
When was liberty of conscience established in Prance ? What league 
v/as formed against Prance? What did Louis do? (P. 431). W^hat wag 
it in the conduct of James II. that induced his subjects to send for the 
prince of Orange ? What did Louis propose to do to obstnict William in 
taking possession of England ? What is said of the subsequent life of 
James? (P. 432). What account is given of the outrages committed at 
the instance of Louvois ? What wa§ the success of the Prench army in 
other places ? (P. 433). On what terms was peace finally made ? What 
accounts for the moderation evinced by Louis ? What w^as there curious 
in the relationship of Louis and Leopold to Charles II. of Spain? What 
advantages had Leopold over Louis in respect to the succession? (P. 
434). What treaty respecting the succession was made between Louis 
and. William ? How was it frustrated ? What was the substance of the 
next treaty? How did Louis observe it? (P. 435). Who succeeded to 
the crown of Spain ? What made the people of England engage with in- 
terest in the war with Louis ? WTiat is said of the victories of Marlbor- 
ough ? (P. 436). Did the Prench lose or gain, on the whole, during this 
period ? Why was Louis unsuccessful in his attempts to make peace ? 
After his failure, what success did the Prench arms meet with ? (P. 437). 
What additional concessions did Louis offer? What requirement of the 
allies did he refuse to perform ? What is said of the success of Marlbor- 
ough ? (P. 438). What circumstances occurred to the advantage of the 
Prench nation at this time ? What were the conditions upon which peace 
was made ? (P. 439). What were the effects of these wars upon the king 
dom of France ? What were the domestic troubles of Louis ? What is 
said of his religious character? (P. 440). What was his address to the 
duke d'Anjou ? How old was Louis at his death? What was the rela- 
tionship between Louis XIV. and his successor ? 

Conversation on Chapter XXXIV. 
(P. 441). What was the character of the first dauphin? (P. 442). What 
is said of his education? What was his father's treatment of him ? What 
was the character of his wife ? What was her fondness for retirement ? 
WTiat is said of the second dauphin? Who was his teacher? (P. 444). 
How was he treated by Louis ? How was he regarded by the courtiers T 
What is said of his wife ? What was her disposition when young ? (P 
445). How did the king regard her ? What is said of Madame de Mainte- 
nou? How was she educated? (P. 446). What character did she exhibit 
after her marriage with the king? How does she appear to have been 
pleased with her position ? (P. 447). What change in the character of the 
court of Louis is mentioned ? What is said of the regularity of his life ? 
(P. 448). What is said of his way of spending the evenings ? (P. 449). 
Wliat fashions of dress ai'e here described ? What two anecdotes are 
tokL illustrative o the politeness of the Prench court? 'P. 450). What 



«24 QUESTIONS. 

was the message sent to the duke of Maine ? "What is said of the life at 
Huet? Describe his early life. (P. 451). How did he succeed as * bish- 
op ? What account is given of the close of his life ? 

, CHAPTER XXXV. 

(P. 452). What were the reasons for the unpopularity of the dnke of 
Orleans ? (P. 453). What reasons are there for believmg that he was in- 
nocent of the crimes imputed to him ? Why was the duke de Maine 
unpopular? Which of the two obtained the regency? (P. 454). What 
was the first event of importance under his administration? What is said 
of the management of Cardinal Alberoni ? What was the success of the 
Spanish fleet in their invasion ? Wliat was the result of the revolt of the 
French in Bretagne ? How did Alberoni's schemes result for himself? 
(P. 455). What is said of the ravages of the plague at Marseilles ? What 
was the cause of the death of the duke of Orleans ? Who became prime 
minister to the king ? What is said of the marriage between Louis XV. 
and Maria Leczinski? What is said of the management of the cardinal 
de Fleury ? (P. 456). What account is given of the contest between Au- 
gustus II. and Stanislaus ? In what quarter was the military power of 
France now directed ? How was the war in Italy tenninated? (P. 457). 
What (vere the principal conditions of the treaty ? What agreement was 
made in reference to Maria Theresa ? How long was it kept ? Whose 
part did France take in the contest which arose ? (P. 458). Whither did 
Maria Theresa go ? How was she received by the people of Hungary '! 
After this, what were the principal events of the war? What anecdote 
is told of cardinal de Fleury ? (P. 459). After his death, what became the 
principal object of the French government ? What success did the French 
army meet with in the Low Countries ? (P. 460). What were the condi 
tions of peace ? 

Conversation on Chapter XXXV 

What is said of the character of the duke of Orleans ? What of that 
of the king ? How was his education conducted ? (P. 461). What methov 
of punishment did his governess use ? What were the results of his edn 
cttion upon his mind and disposition ? (P. 462). Describe the latter par> 
of the life of Madame de Maintenon. What particulars of the plague a< 
Marseilles are given ? (P. 463.) How was its violence diminished? Whaf 
is said of the life of prince Eugene ? What is the story of the man in the 
iron mask ? (P. 464). Who has he been supposed to be ? What is the 
story of his falling into the hands of Louis ? (P. 465). Describe his journey 
to the isle of St. Margaret. What privileges were at last granted to 
him ? (P. 466). What precautions did the king take to prevent any one 
fi-om finding out who he was ? 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

(P. 467). What was the situation of France after the peace of Aix-la- 
Chapelle ? (P. 468). What is said of the origin of the Seven Years' War? 
How came Louis to make peace with Austria, and oppose Prussia? De- 
sci-ibe the events of the naval contest. (P. 469). What was the success of 
the king of Prussia ? What reason had he for wishing to bring the war to 
an end as speedily as possible ? What was probably the intention of the 
French govemm*iit in joining in this war ? Did they giin possession of 
Hanover? (P. 470). What is said of the subsequent conduct of the king of 
Prussia ? How was he saved from final defeat ? After the death of the 
czar what was the political influence of Catherine II.? (P. 471). What 
was the subsequent success of the French arms in Germany? What were 
the results of the war with England? What was the family compact? 
What was its effect? (P. 472). What were the conditions of the peace ? 
What is said of Corsica ? What were the objects of the administration of 
the due de Choiseul ? WTiat is said of the Jesuits ? (P. 473). How did the 



QUESTIONS. 6-25 

contest between the crown atid the parliament result ? Of what disease 
did Louis die ? (P. 474). What is said of his character? What class of lit- 
erary men ai'ose in France at this time? What seems to have been the 
object of their labors ? Who were the most eminent? (P. 475). What is 
said of Voltaire ? What of llousseau ? 

CO;fVERSATIOtf ON CHAPTER XXXVI. 

%Vhat description is given of the dauphin ? (P. 476). Give an account of 
his death. What is said of the marchioness of Pompadour? Describe the 
retirement of the due de Choiseul. (P. 477). "What effect had his dismissal 
from com-t on the prosperity of France ? What is said of the taste displayed 
m those days? (P. 478). Describe the dress of the ladies. How was the 
city of Paris improved? Describe the equestrian statue of Louis XV. (P. 
479). What was the character of the king of Prussia? What was probably 
the cause of the faults in his disposition ? Describe the manner in which his 
father treated him. (P. 480). How was he punished for planning an escape 
to England ? Describe the manner of his release. What is said of his life 
as a king? Describe his manner of reading. (P. 4S1). What were some 
of his favorite books ? What anecdote is told illustrative of his indifTerenca 
to dress ? Describe his usual dress. (P. 482). Repeat Segur's description 
of his appearance. What is said of his wit? — of his fondness for dogs ? 

CHAPTER XXXVIL 

(P. 483). What were the disposition and character of Louis XVI.? (t 
<84). What is said of Turgot and Necker? W"hat was the state of things 
between France and England ? What is said of the treaty between France 
and the United States? What account is given of the naval combat off 
Ushant? (P. 485). What part in these difficulties did Spain take? How 
were the movements of the French and Spanish fleet at first governed? 
Describe the passage of the three fleets up the Channel. (P. 486). What 
are mentioned as the chief events of the year 1780 ? What was the result 
of the action between de Grasse and Rodney? (P. 487). What account of 
the treaty of peace is given? What was the situation of the French gov 
emment after the conclusion of the war? What was the plan of M. Ca- 
lonne for relieving the pecuniaiy embaiTassments of France ? (P. 488). 
What must be done before the nation could be safely taxed? What difh- 
culties were in the way of assembling the States- General ? Why would it 
not answer Calonne's purpose to appeal to Parliament? What was the 
result of convening the Notables? What was the success of the edict? 
(P. 489). Wliat important question ai'ose respecting the meeting of the 
States-General? Why was it important? Can you explain the double 
representation? (P. 490). What is said of the opening of the meeting? 
What were the results expected ? What is said of the real results ? 

C0NVi.I!.SATI0X ON CHAPTER XXXVIL 

vVhat is said of the character of Louis ? (P. 491). How does he comparts 
with Henry IV. ? What was his religious character ? What is said of the 
queen's tastes? (P. 492). Describe her farm house. "What was thought of 
her walks at Versailles ? (P. 493). Wliat is said of her fondness for acting ? 
Wliat of her education? Did she encourage learning in others ? (P. 494). 
What peculiarities of her character are here mentioned ? What were the 
king's amusements ? What is said of his brothers ? (P. 495). Wliat was 
the character of the comte d'Aitois 1 What was the fundamental cause of 
the difficulties which resulted in the French revolution ? Wliat was the 
situation of the French nobility ? AVhat had been the tendency of the 
French philosophy? What influence did the duke of Orleans exert ? What 
was his character? (P. 496). What was Mr. Young's position in reference 
to the revolution ? Repeat the account which he gives of the king"* sitjia. 
tion in the Tuileries. 



626 QUESTIONS. 



CHAPTER XXXVIir. 

(P. 497). What was the first question -which was to bo settled by tV^ 
States-General? {P. 498). What arrangement was made? Whatwastha 
state of aiFairs around Paris and Versailles ? What eifect had the dismissal 
•jf M. Necker ? What; was the first step of the populace at the commence- 
iuent of the revolution ? (P. 499). What new plans were proposed by the 
nobility ? Describe the attack on Versailles. What was Miomenil's con- 
duct? (P. 500). How did the queen escape? What were the results cf 
La. Fayette's interference ? Describe the journey. What was the king'* 
situation in the Tuileries ? (P. 501). What was the character of M. Necker ? 
What decree was passed on Nov. 27 ? What is said of the emigration of 
that time? (P. 502). What members of the royal family now remained in 
Prance? Where were the rest? What important act did the king per- 
fonm on Sept. 14 ? What was the character of the legislative assembly? 
(P. 503). With what feelings did the rest of Europe view these changes T 
What effect did the duke of Brunswick's interference have? Give an ac- 
count of the attack made upon the Tuileries. (P. 504). Whatwere the move- 
ments of the combined armies ? Give an account of the massacre of the 
priests. What was done to the hospital of the Bic^tre ? (P. 505). What 
is said of the conduct of the princess de Lamballe? What does M. Violet 
say of the conduct of the priests ? What assembly succeeded the legisla- 
tive assembly ? Do you know what besides democratical writings Paine is 
distinguished for ? (P. 506). To what new measures did the popular party 
now proceed 1 What is said of divisions among the republicans ? Hovir 
did the Jacobins acquire their name? What is said of the influence of the 
clubs? What was the object of the Jacobins ? WTiat was the king's situ 
ation in the temple? (P. 507). Describe the manner of his accusation 
What privileges did he claim ? Were they granted ? Was he allowed to 
see his family? Describe his trial. (P. 508). What was the result of tha 
trial ? Give an account of his going to the place of Louis XV. What is 
that place now called? (P. 509). What was the king's conduct? What 
is said of the queen's trial and death ? (P. 510). What is said of the death 
of the duke of Orleans ? 



Conversation on Chapter XXXVIII. 

What is said of the emigration of the French nobility? (P. 511). What 
character did the queen display during these troubles ? What w^as her 
success as a politician? (P. 512). Give an account of the plan formed for 
the escape of the royal family. Describe their escape from the palace. 
(P. 513). Give an account of the way in which they were discovered. 
Where were they stopped? Why was the king unwilling to have a pas- 
sage forced for him? (P. 514). Describe their return to Paris. (P. 515). 
How wei'e they treated when they reached Paris ? What wei'e the 
changes in the appearance of Marie Antoinette ? (P. 516). What plan was 
formed for the escape of the princess de Lamballe ? How was it frustrated? 
Under what cii'cumstances was the journal of the young princess written 1 
(P. 517). Give the substance of her account of the way in which her father 
and mother spent their time. What attendance did the royal family have ? 
(P. 518). What is said of the watch kept over them ? What is the prin- 
cess's account of the parting between the queen and her-son? (P. 519). 
What is said of the queen's feelings and conduct after losing her son ? 
What treatment did she receive in the Conciergerie ? (P. 520). What 
treatment did her son receive from Simon ? What effect did it have upon 
him ? What anecdote showing his resolution is given? Describe his situ- 
ation after Simon left him. (P. 521). What is said of the character of *h3 
princess "Elizabeth ? V/hat was her conduct during the closing days of net 
lifo? 



QUESTIONS. 62? 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 



(I* 1(23). What were the plaus and movements of the duke of Brans 
vrick f How was he ro loived in France ? To what suspicion did Dumoa- 
riez vupose himself? What was his subsequent conduct? (P. 524). What 
accou,* is given of the events at Toulon? What was the state of affairs 
in Paris ? Which side did the inhabitants of La Vendee take in the rev- 
olution? Wliat advantages had they in their stiniggle with the republic- 
ans ? Did the royalists or the republicans finally succeed ? (P. 525). What 
edicts were passed at Paris, in reference to religious subjects ? What pro- 
visions were made for iutennents ? (P. 526]. What account is given of 
Robespierre's fall ? \Vhat effect had the reign of terror upon the foreign 
wars ? What was the success of the French in Flandei's and Holland ? 
(P. 527). What is said of mai-itime affairs? — of affairs in Corsica? (P. 
528). How was the government arranged under the new constitution? 
What was the power of the council of the ancients ? — of the council of the 
five hundred ? — of the directory ? What account is given of the couimence- 
ment of Bonaparte's career? What was his policy in reference to paint- 
ings and statues ? (P. 529). What was the result of the expedition to 
Ireland? What was done with the army of galley-slaves? Give au 
account of the movements of Bonaparte in Italy and the suiToundiua 
states. ^P. 530). What did the French accomplish in Switzerland ? Hov; 
did the directory design to attack the English power? On what hazard- 
ous expedition was Bonaparte sent? Give an account of his exploits on 
the way to Egypt. (P. 531). How had the plans of the French been dis- 
guised? How happened it that Nelson missed meeting with Bonaparte ? 
What was the result of the naval action in Aboukir Bay? What did 
Bonaparte then do? (P. 532). What is said of Bonaparte's return to 
Prance ? What change was now made in the government? What posi- 
tion did Bonaparte take ? What movements were made against Bona 
parte by the other European princes ? (P. 533). What success did Suv/ar^ 
row meet with ? How were Bonaparte's overtures to the allies received ? 
What account is given of the battle of Marengo ? (P. 534). "What an-ange- 
ment was made between Kleber and Sir Sydney Smith ? What intention.'? 
did general Monoa declare ? What was Abercromby's plan ? (P. 535). 
What were the conditions of the peace which was finally concluded ? 
When were hostilities recommenced ? What prisoners did the French 
take ? (P. 536). WTiat was the peculiar difficulty in their case ? What 
'lew position did Bonaparte reach now ? 

Conversation on Chapter XXXIX. 
(P. 537). What is said of the early life of Robespierre ? What story is 
told of his arrest and execution? (P. 538). What is said of the invention 
of the guillotine? (P. 539). What v/as the situation of the French emi- 
grants in London ? What was that of the duke of Orleans ? (P. 540). 
What seems to have been the policy of the republican government ? 
WTiat is the anecdote given of the crew of the Majestic? (P. 541). What 
is said of the fashions, in dress and manners, during the early part of 
Louis's reign ? What change was brought about ? Through whose influ- 
ence ? (P. 542). To what did the feeling of admiration of the Americans 
lead? \Vli_at is said of the clubs ? What was the state of things during 
the revolution? What is said of Bonaparte's influence over manners? 
Wl%t is said of the ladies' dress during the early part of Louis's reign 
How was this changed? What led the ladies to copy the dresses of 
antiquity ? 

CHAPTER XL. 

(P. 545). What account is here given of Napoleon's movements ? Whai 
was the result of the battle of Austerlitz ? (P. 546). Wliat is said of tha 
power of the English at sea ? Give an account of the battle of Trafalgar. 
What took place iit this time in the Germanic empire ? (P. 547). Wliat 



6-28 QUESTION:*.. 

was JSTapoleou's sM-jcess in his coutest with Prussia'! tVliat prevented 
him from invading Ei.gland ? What filans did he form fir weakening the 
commerce of the English ? What changes had Napoleon made in the 
governments of Spain and Naples ? (P. 548). With what feelings did the 
Spaniards regard the elevation of Joseph to their throne ? What effect do 
the events in Spain seem to have had in determining the movements of 
the other powers ? What is said of the feelings of the pope ? — of Austria? 
— of Prussia ? Give an account of Napoleon's movements and success, iu 
view of the state of feeling at that time arising. Who received the 
crown of Sweden? (P. 549). What is said of Napoleon's second marriage ? 
J What change took place m the policy of Hussia? Desciibe Napoleon's 
movements in going from Paris to Moscow. (P. 550). What is here said of 
Napoleon's character ! Give the description of the burning of Moscow. 
(P. 551). What prevented his remaining in Moscow? What did he hope 
to accomplish by his victory? Give an account of the events at the com- 
mencement of the retreat. (P. 552). Describe the sufferings incurred in 
crossing the Beresina. What is said of the loss of the army during this 
expedition? (P. 553). What was the effect of all these events upon his 
enemies ? Was Napoleon discouraged ? What did he do ? What was 
the result of the battle of Leipsic? What preparations did he make for 
carrying on war? (P. 554). What is said of Napoleon's management while' 
threatened by so many enemies ? What did the allies do in Paris ? How 
were thej' received by royalists and republicans ? (P. 555). What did Na- 
poleon now decide to do? ^Vhat place was assig-ied as his future resi- 
dence? Wliat steps were taken for recalling Lo'/s XVIII.? What ac- 
count is given of the peace? (P. 556). V/hat su-i'-^cions of Louis were 
current ? What was the state of feeling among Kapoleon's army and 
officers ? Describe his return to France. (P. 557). What did he attempt 
at first to do? Did he succeed? What account is given of the various 
contests which followed ? (P. 558). What account is given of the battle of 
Waterloo ? What were Napoleon's intentions after his defeat ? On what 
conditions was peace made? (P. 559). What was now the state of things 
in Spain? — in Italy? — in Inlanders? Describe Napoleon's surrender to 
the English. (P. 560). What did the English decide to do with him? 
What has been the state of feeling in Erauce since his deatJ» ? 

CoNVEnSATlON ON CHAPTER XL. 

(P. 562). What is said of the early life of Napoleon? What was his 
character at school? (P. 56.3). What is said of his interest in the Revolu- 
tion? What is said of his conduct at Toulon? (P. 564). Where did 
Josephine live after her divorce ? (P. 565). What means were taken to 
deceive the people of Prance as to their danger from the allies' ■? Describe 
Paris during its occupation by the allies. 

CHAPTER XLL 

(P. 566). What were the first acts of Louis? What became of Labe 
doyere? (P. 567). Of Ney?— of Lavallette? What difficulties did Louia 
meet -with? (P. 568). What things that he did caused dissatisfaction in 
France ? What three political parties were in existence ? (P. 569) 
What circumstances operated favorably upon the external state of France ? 
^Vhat course did France take in reference to the troubles in Spain? (P. 
5/0). What was the success of the expedition ? What is said of the state 
of feeling in France in reference to the power of the crown ? (P. 571). 
G-ive an account of the king's death. 

Conversation on Chapter XLI. 
What is said of the history of Prince Talleyrand ? (P. 572). What is said 
of M. Pouche ? (P. 573). Why was Lavallette unv/illing to attempt to es- 
cape ? Describe his escape. (P. 574). Where was he concealed ? (P. 575). 
What was the effect of these events upon Madame Lavallette ? 



QUESTIONS. 62J» 

CHAPTER XL II 

(P. 576J. What were the intentions and actual effects of CI arles' act of 
lademnilication ? What other unpopular acts followed this ? (P. 577). 
What was the feeling toward Prince Jules de Poliguac ? (P. 578). "What 
results followed the expedition to Algiers ? What were the six ordinances 
which displeased the people ? Were the king and ministers aware of their 
danger? (P. 579). What was the state of things on the next day? What 
is said of the appearance of things on the morning of the 28th ? What 
method of warfare was used during the day? (P. 580). What is said of 
Marmont's sincerity ? Wliat was done during the night of the 29th by the 
populace ? What events closed this contest ? (P. 581). What is said of La 
Fayette ? WTiat anecdote is given of the three Englishmen? W"hat po- 
sition did the duke of Orleans take? (P. 582). What did the king and 
dauphin do? W^hat did the mob prepare to do ? Did the king resist? (P. 
583). What steps did the chamber of deputies proceed to take ? Wh»4 ac- 
count is given of the early life of Louis Pliilippe ? (P. 584). WTiat effect on 
his position and influence had the second restoration? 

CHAPTER XLIIL 

(P. 585). What account is given of the situation of Louis Philippe raring 
his banishment? (P. 586). What is said of his character? W^liat w^.e the 
character and influence of his wife ? How was the voting power '.-r suf- 
frage of France managed? ^Vhat was the first course open before him? 
(P. 587). What was the second ? Which did he choose ? What account is 
given of tlie war in Algiers ? — of the fortification of Paris ? (P. 588). Whpt 
was its real object ? What is said of the marriage of the Spanish princess ? 
(P. 589). Was Louis Philippe successful in his measiires ? V/hat effect did 
they have? What were the reform banquets ? Describe ths struggle be 
tween the king and the people. Give an account of Louis PbUippa'« ef 
cap?. (P. 590). What is his position now ? 



[arper s i^ataiogue. 



The attention of gentlemen, in town or country, designing to form 
Libraries or enrich their Literary Collections, is respectfully invited 
to Harper's Catalogue, which v/ill be found to comprise a large pro- 
portion of the standard and most esteemed works in English and 
Classical Literature — comprehending over three thousand 
VOLUMES — which are offered, in most instances, at less than one- 
half the cost of similar productions in England. 

To Librarians and others connected with Colleges, Schools, &c., 
who may not have access to a trustworthy guide in forming the true 
estimate of literary productions, it is believed tliis Catalogue will 
prove especially valuable for reference. 

To prevent disappointment, it is suggested that, whenever books 
can not be obtained through any bookseller or local agent, applica- 
tions with remittance should be addressed direct to Harper Si 
Brothers, which will receive prompt attention. 



Seni by mail on receipt of Ten Cents. 



Address HARPER & BROTHERS, 

Franklin Square^ New Yoss, 



£ 635 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS I 



030 241 533 A 









